It is the first person partly autobiographical[2] account of an often bored film devotee going to Cleveland for medical school, making observations on everything in his daily life, either in a philosophical manner, or by comparing any given incident with some classic film scene, or both.

Halfway through, the narration is interrupted by Steve's story, also told in first person.

The novel eventually resumes with the original first person narrator, who finally decides medical school is not for him.

Detour was republished in 2003 by Del Sol Press, in an expanded, rewritten edition.

I find more affinity with him than with any other recent American novelist.This is an extraordinary and artistically rigorous novel .... [Brodsky] is a master both of technique and of language, his sentences positively crackling with unexpected insights.Brodsky's a comer, chockablock with high intentions and nerve.The real protagonist is language: adventures occur, not to people, but to metaphors and images.It should be obvious to serious readers ... that Brodsky ... is a sensitive, original, and insightful writer, one of the best produced by this country in the last 30 years.