Gun, with Occasional Music (Harvest Book)

Gun, with Occasional Music (Harvest Book)

A hard-boiled detective tale full of talking animals and murder, from the award-winning author of Motherless Brooklyn and The Arrest Gumshoe Conrad Metcalf has problems—there's a rabbit in his waiting room and a trigger-happy kangaroo on his tail. Near-future Oakland is a brave new world where evolved animals are members of society, the police monitor citizens by their karma levels, and mind-numbing drugs such as Forgettol and Acceptol are all the rage. Metcalf has been shadowing Celeste, the wife of an affluent doctor. Perhaps he's falling a little in love with her at the same time. When the doctor turns up dead, our amiable investigator finds himself caught in a crossfire between the boys from the Inquisitor's Office and gangsters who operate out of the back room of a bar called the Fickle Muse. Mixing elements of sci-fi, noir, and mystery, this clever first novel from a beloved author is a wry, funny, and satiric look at all that the future may hold. "Marries Chandler's style and Philip K. Dick's vision . . . An audaciously assured first novel." - Newsweek "Marvelous . . . Stylish, intelligent, darkly humorous and highly readable entertainment." - San Francisco Examiner From the celebrated author of Motherless Brooklyn, a wry, satiric parable of a hardboiled man out of time Gumshoe Conrad Metcalf has problems-not the least of which are the rabbit in his waiting room and the trigger-happy kangaroo on his tail. Near-future Oakland is an ominous place where evolved animals function as members of society, the police monitor citizens by their karma levels, and mind-numbing drugs such as Forgettol and Acceptol are all the rage. In this brave new world, Metcalf has been shadowing the wife of an affluent doctor, perhaps falling a little in love with her at the same time. But when the doctor turns up dead, our amiable investigator finds himself caught in the crossfire in a futuristic world that is both funny-and not so funny. "Marvelous . . . Stylish, intelligent, darkly humorous, and highly readable entertainment."-SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER "Lethem has talent to burn."-THE VILLAGE VOICE LITERARY SUPPLEMENT AUTHOR OF THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE Jonathan Lethem is the author of six novels, including National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude. He lives in New York City. Jonathan Lethem  is the bestselling author of thirteen novels, including  Brooklyn Crime Novel ,  The Feral Detective , and  Motherless Brooklyn , winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. His five story collections include  Men and Cartoons  and  Lucky Alan , and his short fiction has appeared in the  New Yorker ,  Harper’s   Magazine ,   and the  Paris Review , among other publications, garnering a Pushcart Prize, a World Fantasy Award, and inclusion in  The Best American Short Stories . The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship, he lives in Los Angeles and Maine. chapter 1 IT WAS THERE WHEN I WOKE UP, I SWEAR. THE FEELING. It was two weeks after I'd quit my last case, working for Maynard Stanhunt. The feeling was there before I tuned in the musical interpretation of the news on my bedside radio, but it was the musical news that confirmed it: I was about to work again. I would get a case. Violins were stabbing their way through the choral arrangements in a series of ascending runs that never resolved, never peaked, just faded away and were replaced by more of the same. It was the sound of trouble, something private and tragic; suicide, or murder, rather than a political event. It was the kind of musical news that forces me to perk up my ears. Murder doesn't get publicized much anymore. Usually it's something you hear in an after-hours place between drinks-or else you stumble across it yourself on a case, and then you're the lone voice at the bar, telling a story of murder to people afraid to believe you. But the violins nagged at me. The violins said I should get up that morning and go down to my office. They said there was something like a case out there. They set my wallet throbbing. So I showered and shaved and got my gums bleeding with a toothbrush, then stumbled into the kitchen to cauterize the wounds with some scalding coffee. The mirror was still out, with fat, half-snorted lines of my blend stretching across it like double-jointed white fingers. I picked up the razor blade and steered the drugs back into a wax-paper envelope, and brushed off the mirror with my sleeve. Then I made coffee, slowly. By the time I was done with it, the morning was mostly over. I went down to the office anyway. I shared my waiting room with a dentist. The suite had originally been designed for a pair of psychoanalysts, whose clients were probably better able to share than the dentist's and mine-back when telling other people about your problems was the rage. I sometimes thought it was ironic, that the psychoanalysts had probably hoped to put guys like me out of bus