"The Great Leader"

by Jim Harrison

Grove Press, 336 pp., $24

With "The Great Leader," novelist Jim Harrison ("Legends of the Fall," "True North") is back with a thoroughly enjoyable tale of religion, sex and money in which a hard-bitten detective pits himself against a diabolical cult leader. But as readers might expect from Harrison, known for his love of offbeat characters and uncanny plot twists: This is not your grandfather's detective novel.

Things haven't been going well for Simon Sunderson. His wife of 25 years left him; he's drinking too much, and at 65, he can't seem to keep his libido in check. Worse than that, as a newly retired state police detective, there's an unfinished case that's stuck in his craw.

A cult leader has been sexually abusing his followers' teenage children, but the kids won't testify and the parents will not press charges. Sunderson, despite his recent retirement, cannot let the case go. With the help of a young, computer-savvy assistant, Sunderson tracks Dwight, the "Great Leader" of the title, from Michigan to Arizona.

Dwight is intent on establishing a cult commune in the desert, Yahweh-kiva, a kind of faux-Apache boot camp. His religion, a cockamamie mix of American Indian lore and New Age encounter group, is baffling to the old detective, and Sunderson is clearly out of his element. On his first visit to Dwight's commune, he is stoned (literally) by Dwight's followers and barely escapes with his life. Recovering in the hospital, he unwisely gets involved with an alluring nurse and her drug-lord brother, then things really begin to slide.

Sunderson is an unlikely detective, bookish, philosophical, but realistic when it comes to his work, "Law enforcement," he admits, is "merely the manhole cover on the human sewer." He loves history and fishing for brook trout in remote Michigan streams. He makes lists. He tries to get into his suspect's head by studying Native-American religions and consulting with his Chippewa-Finn fishing buddy, Marion. When he needs to sober up, he goes on long solo camping trips.

Like many of Harrison's flawed heroes, Sunderson is a delight to spend time with. His candid observations range from the insightful to the preposterous; sometimes both. "He reflected how intolerant the young are of adult ironies," Harrison writes of Sunderson, "and that a compendium of our sexual laws might exceed the size of the Chicago phone book ... The mating schedule of dogs and cattle seemed more reasonable and depended on a biological alarm that rang only once or twice a year."

The characters with whom Sunderson surrounds himself are equally enjoyable. His teenage assistant, Mona, is an outspoken Goth wise beyond her years, and Dwight's girlfriend, Carla, is a tsunami of conflicting desires. The author has great fun sending up contemporary cults and lesser crazes. At Yahweh-kiva, Dwight's followers live in stone huts and subsist on a "natural Apache" diet of sheep and cattle in winter and vegetables in summer. The price of admission starts at $20,000.

The novel slows near the end, with a half-dozen plot threads left hanging, but explodes in a near-cinematic climax. It's a wild ride for an old cop trying to get his life back on track and a great read for the rest of us.