Gun, with Occasional Music

I love this book because it perfectly blends the surreal with noir and science fiction and comes together with its own brand of dark humor. While parts of this book are unsettling and strange, there’s a solid throughline of the investigator seeking the truth in a broken world.

Of all the books here, I think this one has the most damaged society, and the main character, Conrad Metcalf, is a match for it. Drugs that make you forget everything and be complacent. Baby heads. Uplifted animals. The book is never afraid to get stranger, but it also tackles some pretty… show more.

This is the mystery on my list with the weirdest setting of all. It’s a science fiction novel full of genetically engineered talking animals, super-intelligent toddlers, and a government that awards “karma points” for good deeds and takes them away for infractions. And woe be to the person who reaches zero karma.

This book is one wild ride. I wouldn’t say that the world is believable, but it is a lot of fun, and I enjoyed the social satire.

Jonathan Lethem’s first book is, perhaps, not as well regarded as some of his later works. But it blew me away back in the ’90s—with a black humor that satirized both noir mystery and science fiction. I still love it.

The future is totalitarian. Everyone is stupefied by mandated memory-deadening drugs. Karma scores must be kept up, or you’re put in the freezer—literally. Gumshoe Conrad Metcalf gets hired to tail a cheating wife. But things go sideways when the client turns up dead. The cops suspect Metcalf. He encounters many a shady, seedy character, including animals given human-like intelligence; such… show more.