Gun, with Occasional Music

"Gun, With Occasional Music" is my first Jonathan Lethem book, and it certainly won't be my last. Although reading just one of his books hardly ranks me as an expert on his career, I will say that this story about a private detective in a future, dystopian nightmare will probably be one of the most unusual experiences you'll ever have with a book (unless you make a habit of reading quirky, ultra bizarre fiction). Lethem must have been the product of a union between Raymond Chandler and William Burroughs, with genetic material donated by Dashiell Hammett and Aldous Huxley. That's the only way to describe this amazing blend of noir, science fiction, and political commentary. "Gun, With Occasional Music" is the type of book you introduce your friends to in order to see their reaction after they finish it.Lethem's future is one in which I would not want to visit, let alone live in. For private investigator Conrad Metcalf, this nightmare is the only world he knows. What's so bad about this author's horrific visions? In the world of tomorrow, society is quite different from the world we know. For one thing, animals (rabbits, sheep, kangaroos, and cats) now walk upright, speak, commit crimes, and work. It's all a part of what authorities call "evolving," and it isn't just about the animals. Human infants take part in the hijinks as well, since society decided that it takes too long for people to grow up. The result is "babyheads," infants that speak, smoke, and drink thanks to massive infusions of growth hormones. As if that's not enough to cause you screaming fits, and apparently many of the people in this brave new world feel like screaming about it, the authorities provide "make," a drug used to modify behavior. Moreover, people can make their own blends of the drug, adding such great substances as forgettol so they don't have to remember their miserable existence. Those brave souls who wish to challenge the system, or the innocents just caught in police nets, face the dread terror of the inquisitors. This secret police directorate possesses the power to ask questions, arrest people, and carry out sentences that include freezing people for years in a sort of cryogenic state. Conrad Metcalf is a private inquisitor, a former member of the secret police who struck out on his own after his disillusionment with the system led to an early retirement.Now Metcalf has another case, one that promises to be a real doozy. After a doctor turns up dead in a seedy motel room, a client named Orton Angwine turns up on Metcalf's doorstep. Angwine claims he had nothing to do with the murder, and he wants Metcalf to clear him from the looming cloud of suspicion. Metcalf's subsequent investigation leads him through a labyrinth of underworld types, corrupt doctors, a jilted wife, a cranky babyhead, a kangaroo with a grudge, and inquisitors who would rather see this case disappear forever. Whatever happens in the end, Metcalf must tread a fine line during his investigation

Tough P.I. Conrad Metcalf is having a rough time lately. The instrumental news on the radio hints of bad things coming. It's getting tougher to figure out what his clients want, because they all snort so much government-supplied Forgettall that they don't know who he is, let alone what they do for a living. Only Private Inquisitors like Conrad are allowed to ask any questions at all, in fact. Conrad's got it tough: he needs to see his old girlfriend about a personal matter, half his customers are evolved animals, one of his suspects is a brain-evolved, drunken, sarcastic, three-year-old babyhead, and the gangsters in the back room of the Fickle Muse have sicked a kangaroo hit man named Joey on him. What kind of catastrophe could have produced an insane world like this? Why are the children being turned into babyheads, and why evolve animals to take their places? Why is everyone upside-down on free dope all the time, why is the news just sad or happy music, and why do people have appliances as parts of their names? Why does the government freeze you if your karma drops too low? And how the heck can you shoot someone with a gun that goes "Dum, da dum dum" when you draw it? Ah, ah, ah: no questions allowed. Just sit back and watch this thing unwind. There's a real hard-boiled private eye in this book, but he's a gorilla. That didn't even surprise me after the sheep was murdered. Even though justice is a lost cause and human rights an interesting problem, Metcalf fights on for his client's freedom, risking his own karma in the process. Lethem himself obviously has karma to burn.

After reading Letham's less-than-coherent "Amnesia Moon," I almost made the mistake of not reading him again, but a couple of reviews posted here convinced me otherwise. This book was magnificent: brilliant ideas and brilliant writing. I'm just surprised that I hadn't heard more about this author, because this work is far superior to most modern fiction I've read. Not being much of a genre fan myself, it was nice to see a hard-boiled detective story in a sci-fi (though entirely conceivable sci-fi) setting. Rich, developed characters (be they detectives, doctors, evolved apes or tiny mental giants) and a thick plot with no holes in the story to worry about. Be forwarned, its a real page-turner, and not something you want to pick up unless you've got a day or two free.

I read this book in one sitting, feeling like I had snorted a mixtue of Regrettol and Addictol, two of the many govenment-sponsored drugs made available for free to citizens of this future world. The narrator's personal blend of drugs was "skewed heavily towards Acceptol, with just a touch of Regrettol to provide that bittersweet edge, and enough addictol to keep me craving it even in my darkest moments." The blend he delivered to me, however, was light on the Acceptol.This bittersweet story would be too depressing to recommend to anyone were it not for the humor, which had me laughing out loud. Metcalf and the kangaroo are worth reading again and again, but with little jokes like Testafer "Here's a tip, Grover. You're supposed to go first-" "Shut up." Well, I'd tried to warn him" I was reading dectective fiction as good as Chandler, to whom the book is inscribed.This is some of the best fiction I've ever read and I recommend it highly.

This was a stunning debut and a sure sign of things to come from this gifted and wildly imaginative writer. "Gun, With Occasional Music" takes the hard-boiled noir detective genre and twists it around like the torso of a man watching a good-looking woman pass him on the street. Conrad Metcalfe is a two-bit scuzz-bag P.I. ripped from the pages of Raymond Chandler or Ross MacDonald, spaced out on nose candy and 25 karmas away from an upstate vacation on a cryogenic slab. His nemesis, Joey Castle, is an evolved kangaroo born into a marsupial mob and working his way up from being Danny Phoneblum's flunky to being Mr. Big. Taking the case of a chump doctor set up to take the fall for the murder of his partner, Metcalfe uses guile, snappy repartee and dumb luck to blow the case wide open. If you start reading this book, be prepared to look stupid because you will have an ear-to-ear grin on your face until you put it down. This book will be for Generation X what Tom Robbins' "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" was for the Baby Boomers - a cult classic enjoyed by those in the know. Jonathan Lethem deserves much more of a following than he has. Reading this book will certainly get the ball rolling.