Monday, January 25, 2010

#4: Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

Frank Minna is a former minor criminal trying to become a major private eye in Jonathan Lethem's detective novel Motherless Brooklyn. But Lethem always bends genres and upends expectations, so Minna is dispatched in the early going, leaving his sidekick, an orphan suffering from Tourette's Syndrome, to find Minna's killer.

Very fine, offbeat novel from Lethem, paying homage to Raymond Chandler the way some of his other novels are nods to greats like Philip Dick (Gun, with Occasional Music), Steve Gerber (Fortress of Solitude), and so on. I enjoy how Lethem always writes a fully-realized worldview featuring Brooklyn past and present, which adds a lot to his work.

I am a big fan of Lethem and liked this novel about as well as I thought I would. Recommended.

I borrowed this book from my brother a long while ago, and is my weakness, took a long time to read it and return it.

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