"The Same River Twice" is the tale of beautiful losers living on the edge. American filmmaker Max and French fashion designer Odile found love when he rescued her from an unnamed attacker. He asked no questions, she gave no answers, and so began a rewarding life for the two artists, leading to an acclaimed first film for him and a couture clientele for her. But as these wunderkinds enter middle age, success fades in the rearview mirror.

To bankroll Max's next movie, Odile agrees to smuggle Soviet May Day flags out of Russia for Turner, an art dealer in Paris. But when her traveling companion disappears in Belarus, the question is posed that drives the rest of the book: What exactly is being smuggled out of the former U.S.S.R.?

Film references -- Hitchcock, Polanski, Bergman and Godard -- abound in this lushly cinematic mystery. Some slightly implausible scenes pay homage to Hollywood clichés. For instance, in a nod to "Blue Velvet," Odile learns key information while hiding in the closet of the missing smuggler. A torture scene straight out of a Bond movie fails to sideline the victim. During a chase scene, two workmen carry plate glass across the street, in a bit from Bogdanovich's screwball comedy "What's Up, Doc?"

Hollywood film noir and French New Wave are appropriate sources of inspiration for this tale of damaged characters. Classic cinema often enshrines the morally compromised anti-hero, the outsider who is little worse for wear, whether it is Bogart in "Casablanca" or Belmondo in "Breathless." "We're all adults," Turner says, "We can work around a little pain."

As in the films of Hitchcock and Polanski, the sense of a corrupt, monolithic entity guiding human destiny informs this book, which proceeds through redirection rather than revelation. Just as a situation reaches a boiling point, Mooney switches focus. The cast of characters is big, yet no one seems to be in a hurry to solve the mystery. Max and Turner, for instance, explain their passivity with the existential observation that situations rather than people direct events. Or do they? Was Odile's risky behavior at the start of the novel a way to get her husband's creative juices flowing again?

The hand of a good editor might have streamlined this story, which drags a bit in the middle. And yet, an inspired chapter devoted to the point of view of a dying character lifts this book above the level of potboiler. "The Same River Twice" is a good beach book for the highbrow set -- those who take their thrillers with a dash of art history.

James Cihlar is a St. Paul poet and the author of "Undoing."