Comment

Feb 29, 2020smatte rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
I read this book randomly because Jonathan Lethem's name kept coming up in scifi anthologies (particularly his work on Philip K. Dick's catalog) and I was intrigued enough by the title of this book to check it out and read it. I'm glad I did! Gun, With Occasional Music is at once a paranoid dystopian work of speculative fiction and a classic gumshoe detective (or, in this case, inquisitor) narrative of the post-WWII variety. Sure, it's derivative of authors who came before, but it reads nicely and the world it puts the reader in is a cartoon funhouse of suspense, weird characters and outlandish locales. The witty one-liners that carry the story along are funny enough not to get annoying and would do Raymond Chandler proud. I plan on reading every Lethem book I can find from now on.