Michael Fertik’s novel Hip Set is not only a thrilling detective story but also a literary inquiry into the sacred and the profane—the secular sandwiched between both. When it comes to human behavior, there is nothing pure about it, just as there is nothing pure about what lies on an arc between good and bad or between heaven and hell. Hip Set scours human behavior in all its dimensions and disguises, whether the behavior tilts toward the sacred or toward the profane. Usually, it—human behavior—settles in the secular world, until the mythic intervenes and tantalizes with its own riches. Fertik ...