Of all the real-life people to wind up in a mystery novel, Søren Kierkegaard is probably the last you would expect, but in Thom Satterlee’s The Stages, the Danish theologian/philosopher takes center stage, even though he’s been dead for more than a century and a half. That’s because Daniel Peters, the protagonist, has devoted his life to translating Kierkegaard’s mountainous manuscripts into English. Peters, an American living in Copenhagen on a work visa, has Asperger’s syndrome, which helps his detail-oriented work, but at the same time renders him unaware of even the most common human emotions. His entire life is taken up by Kierkegaard, so when Mette, his former girlfriend—also a Kierkegaard scholar—is found dead, instead of grieving for her, he mourns the loss of a missing manuscript. This emotional “deafness” could have made Peters an unsympathetic protagonist, but in author Satterlee’s gifted hands, Peters is endearing. Realizing his emotional shortcomings, the poor man tries desperately to mimic an appropriate reaction to the discovery that Mette was murdered, but fails miserably. When he learns that he is the chief suspect in her murder, he can’t even feel fear—just a vague anxiety that imprisonment will interfere with his translation work. Yet while Peters can’t experience “normal” human emotions, he does harbor a strong loyalty to Mette and her own work with Kierkegaard, so he sets out to track down her killer. Satterlee’s writing gifts are enormous. The author of the highly acclaimed poetry collection Burning Wyclif, he is adept at rendering Kierkegaard’s dense philosophy not only readable, but exquisite. And there’s a lot of Kierkegaard here. While Peters speaks with other suspects, he wonders how Kierkegaard would view them. When walking the streets of Copenhagen in search of clues, he can’t forget he’s walking in Kierkegaard’s footsteps. In the end, Peters’ obsession with the Danish philosopher almost gets him killed, but at the same time, it not only saves his life, it gives him a deeper appreciation for the fragility of that life.