Gun, with Occasional Music
by Jonathan Lethem
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Tor (New York): 1994. Paperback. ISBN-10: 0-312-85878-7 Suggested retail price: $12.95 (US) Tags: detective; gumshoe; kangaroos; metaphor; murder; Mystery; Science Fiction Tactical strength: [6/10] |
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Conrad Metcalf, one of the last private detectives in a near-future Oakland of evolved animals and near absolute government control, has a lot working against him. His client's don't cooperate with his murder investigations, and the Office, the official government judicial body, keeps lowering his karma points. Once your karma reaches zero, you spend six years in the freezer -- literally frozen. Oh, and he, along with almost everyone else, feeds an addiction to government sponsored drugs. In spite of all this, Metcalf makes slow steady progress toward solving the murder mystery, and throws in plenty of Chandleresque metaphors.
Lethem's first novel doesn't provide any ground-breaking literary epiphanies but does promise a future of interesting and imaginative novels. He writes with a clean style that doesn't overexplain the oddities of his fictional universe, but could have used some polish on the plot. When Metcalf's karma reaches zero and wakes up six years later, the plot looses most of its forward momentum. Lethem tries to show that Metcalf still has the same momentum in an environment where the government discourages even personal conversation, but the climax barely provides enough interest to push you over the hump into the resolution.
An interesting future that seems some middle point between now and Dick's future in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep (i.e., Blade Runner), but not a haunting dystopia like Orwell's 1984.
