Ever wonder if your employer is keeping secrets from you? You know, the kind that involve swindling gangsters out of millions of dollars for jewels? And what if his wife is a total babe? Sounds like a potent cocktail of romance and danger to me.

Jose Manuel Prieto’s new novel, Rex, is a work that takes this scenario, tosses it into the air, then runs it into the ground. Not typical crime fiction (except for the shady men and mysterious females), the book relies on a sharp, and sometimes exhausting, literary edge.

J. is a tutor who has been hired by a Russian couple living in Spain to teach their son, Petya. He only teaches the boy from one book — that remains nameless throughout. He relies on this book for everything, it seems, pummelling the reader with wild descriptions of swimming pools and the Russian monarchy, life lessons and the sea.

At first J. believes his employers, Vasily and Nelly, are Russian mafioso, but soon learns they’re on the run from those very gangsters. He eventually becomes a part of the smuggling and sale of fake diamonds with the pair. It doesn’t help that he’s in love with Nelly, a woman of intense beauty.

An “Author’s Note” section at the rear of the book acts as a welcome guide to the novel. It turns out the book J. teaches from isn’t just one, but several. It makes more sense to learn about life from numerous books rather than one, but by the end of the novel, this approach becomes tired and convoluted. Who is the “writer” and what “book” are we talking about here? If not familiar with the writers and their works, the novel can become a maze of boring irrelevance, and it ultimately suffers because of this.

The third novel in a trilogy that is preceded by Encyclopedia of a Life in Russia and Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire, Rex is described by Prieto as a work of post-totalitarianism. What dictates Vasily’s and Nelly’s actions, their obsession with money, the desire to rebuild a Russian monarchy, are all products of the failed system the country adopted for over 60 years. With a newly attained wealth and status, the dream is within their grasp — if only they weren’t so crooked. Shady dealings prove to be their downfall.

Prieto himself was born in Cuba and lived in Russia for 12 years. He claims the novel is autobiographical, which is believable. Despite the fantastic use of language and metaphor, the story of falling in with con-artists doesn’t feel far-fetched. But that’s about all that happens.

No great mystery, Rex is a novel hampered by its own language. Though the plot is discernable, the detours Prieto takes comparing it to other works often feel unnecessary. As a book for fellow writers, Rex will delight those in search of vast description, but bore the reader who just wants to kick back and relax.