Downward-Facing Death by Neal Pollack

If you read Pollack’s yoga memoir, Stretch: The Unlikely Making of a Yoga Dude (2010), some of Matt Bolster’s persona will sound familar. Thought Pollack was never an LA cop, Bolster is his alter-ego in several other ways. Both are improbable yogis, yet see in yoga a way to be more at peace with the world. Many of the book’s supporting characters, including the stoner sidekick, the spacey front desk guy, the hottie teacher, and the charismatic guru, are the products of the years Pollack spent immersed in LA’s yoga culture.

The circuitous route to solving the murder leaves plenty of time for Bolster to take numerous asana classes (and even teach one), practice nonattachment to his negative emotions, and order from the secret menu at In-N-Out Burger, in one of the book’s many LA moments. (Others include plenty of time spent criss-crossing the city in a beater car trying to avoid traffic.)

Downward-Facing Death is both a send-up and a warm embrace of the mystery genre. By endowing his detective with a yoga education and a modicum of self awareness, Pollack is able to address some larger truths and turn a critical eye on yoga culture while Bolster is busy solving the case. The role of modern gurus and the blind devotion they can inspire is the crime story’s subtext. Readers who follow yoga with any kind of attention will recognize that the murder victim (not a spoiler since he gets offed in the prologue) is in many ways modeled on Bikram Choudhury.

Pollack is already at work on a second Matt Bolster novel for Amazon, in which a prominent yoga teacher becomes embroiled in a sex scandal, something we’ve seen all too frequently in the recent past. This second book will also initially be published serially for the Kindle, but installments will be weekly instead of monthly to keep the momentum going.

Yoga books that offer basic asana instruction or promise to solve every problem in your life have their place and can be great resources when done well, but thoughtful, humorous commentary on contemporary yoga culture is a little harder to come by. Thoughtful, humorous commentary on contemporary yoga culture disguised as detective novels are the rarest of all and definitely worth your read.

Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.