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 Gun With Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem
reviewed by ??
Original appearance: Albedo one issue ??, date?
GUN WITH OCCASIONAL MUSIC is a great title for a book. Jonathan Lethem has taken the hardboiled private eye novel and grafted it onto a set of characters steeped in a weirdness that Ross Macdonald or Dashiell Hammett could not have imagined even with the assistance of your favourite psychedelic hallucinogen.
It is set in a future California where asking questions is against the law, unless you've got a licence, and an addiction to drugs of one sort or another appears to be almost compulsory. Oh, and one other thing, not everyone is fully human. Evolution therapy has a lot to answer for. Lethem's hero is PI Conrad Metcalf and boy does he have a different array of problems. Apart from those which every private eye from Sam Spade to Jim Rockford experiences - an uneasy relationship with the police, an acute shortage of funds, a penchant for being beaten up etc. - Metcalf client has a girlfriend who is a sheep (very Irish), a competitor who is an ape and there's an evolved (though not very) kangaroo hanging around just about every poorly lit location in the book waiting to pound on his bones.
Newsweek called this novel dazzling and as far as the setting and characters are concerned this is a pretty fair description. And therein lies the problem. Lethem seems to have dazzled not only Newsweek but himself with the breath of his invention. Strip the window dressing away and what you've got is a pretty (sub?) standard piece of detective fiction.
However, if you don't look too close and you read fast this is as good a way to kill a few hors as most you'll find on the shelves of your local bookshop. It's fast-paced, it's witty, it's inventive and it's beautifully written. I suppose a decent plot would be just too much to expect as well.
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