'Gun, With Occasional Music' is a science fiction noir mystery. As with all crime noir, I must compare it unfavourably with Raymond Chandler. Sorry, but there it is. That done, I do recommend this novel as an entertainingly weird twist on the lone PI investigating a mystery with the world against him. Lethem's style can be found about equidistant between Jeff Noon and The Great Chandler.

I very much enjoyed the details of the world evoked in this book. Free drugs for everyone, evolved animals doing most of the menial jobs, and wordless news updates. All this was presented in the deadpan, hard-boiled narration of the former-cop-current-detective-for-hire. Probably the least interesting part, though, was the mystery itself. Perhaps this was an intentionally postmodern element of the book, but I had little interest in whodunnit or why. I was more interested in the self-destructiveness of the narrator and pondering what on earth was going on with the creepy 'babyheads'.

Thus I can't wholeheartedly recommend 'Gun, With Occasional Music', although I love the world within which it is set. I think Jeff Noon does the mystery-in-bizarre-near-future thing more effectively in 'Pollen' and 'Nymphomation'. A lot of amusement can be had from reading this novel as a stylistic parody of the noir genre, though. On balance, I liked the parts better than the whole. ( )

Eh--if I want to read Philip K. Dick, I think I'll just read Philip K. Dick, and not his--however worthy--epigones.

Gun, with Occasional Music remained on my shelves decades after my first reading. I did not recall specifics, but the premise remained enticing, probably in much the same way I initially was persuaded to buy it. Lethem's plot and dialogue follow the gumshoe trope of distracting the reader: they carried me along effortlessly, the banter and interactions among characters amusing, the clues and case developments holding my attention.

There was nothing to it. The Super Chief was on time, as it almost always is, and the subject was as easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket.

The setting, meantime, works on a parallel track: a future dystopia, unclear how far in the future, unstated but presumably our own United States. Like the Chandler epigraph, Lethem does well not to say too much about it, nor about his world except in dribs and drabs. This layer of textual commentary rides shotgun while the shamus goes about his rounds, sketching out the generic reality the detective lives in, and later, the one it evolves into. The sci-fi alternative reality starts out amusingly different from our own, takes a turn, and ends up feeling uncomfortably familiar.

It's a quick read, the barest suggestion of an alien landscape, and all in all, worth keeping in my library for another couple decades. ( )

This is a science fiction-mystery-noir-humor story with a hard-boiled detective, I think I missed a category.

The setting is poorly defined and that is part of the reader’s exploration. Conrad Metcalf is a detective, a private inquisitor in a world where (not-private) inquisitors spy on people doling out or removing credits. Drugs are commonplace and. tailored, people use them to create moods, to forget, to enhance experiences, it seems endless and very personalized.

Society has created intelligent animals, educated babies and a few gadgets. These are revealed slowly through the book.

At the beginning, the book felt like a detective noir story, it read like a Raymond Chandler story. Conrad is approached by a man panicked, being framed for a murder and no means of payment and low on credits. During the investigation, he encounters kangaroo muscle, holographic houses and a few others.

The extensive use of drugs made me feel like the whole book is a drug-induced illusion. The author reinforces this by making use of bizarre idioms and metaphors that get increasingly peculiar as the book goes on.

The title is a reference to a gun that plays music whenever it is drawn, something to do with advertising.

The book started off amusing and new but started to get old toward the end. It ended just in time. ( )

A lot of this book felt like a cheesy noir detective story, from the bantering that always leaves our hero with the last word to the predictable sexual conquest. On top of that, the writing had some pretty big flaws. Of many, here is one example:

The big man chuckled. "What would be my motive for telling you that?"
"Simple. I'll find out one way or another. Either you tell me now or I bother your loved ones about it."
"Very well. There's something I like about letting you go on thinking your threats are effective with me. I suppose I admire your bluster."

See how the author has to have the big-man character explain his motive for revealing information? That's because the author is having that character do something that makes no sense given what has already been told to the reader. Major no-no.

So, three stars? Really? I think yes, and it's because of the twist 2/3 of the way through the book, and the way that the twist sustains itself to the end. I was phoning it in with this book, just getting through it for my bookclub, until that twist. Then I sat up, tucked my feet under myself, and dove on in. ( )

Lethem, Jonathan. Gun, With Occasional Music. Harcourt, 1994.
Jonathan Lethem says he was much influenced by Philip K. Dick, and it shows in his first novel, Gun, With Occasional Music. It is crammed with original speculative details and repurposed genre memes. It has the noir zip and pop of books like A Scanner Darkly. Like Dick, Lethem is fascinated by the drug culture. In his world, mood-altering drugs are legal and free. They have names like addict all, forget all, accept all, and avoid all. If you use too much forget all, you will need to carry an electronic storage device to tell you what you decided not to permanently erase. Freedom of the press is a thing of the past. Print news has been outlawed, and the brief morning news reports are always accompanied by music that tells you how you should feel about the story. Humans share their world with evolved animals to do menial jobs; and the wealthy invest in evolution therapy for their children, which turns them into unhappy prodigies called babyheads. Babyheads have their own bars in which three-year-olds drown their sorrows and lament the side effects of their evolved condition. The justice system in this tightly controlled future Los Angeles is based on “karma points.” Pro-social behavior adds them to your karma card. Bad deeds cost you points. Our protagonist is a private inquisitor who takes the case of a man charged with murder. The government has already reduced his “karma points” to zero, giving him the choice of cryosleep or prison. The investigation will not be easy, because the local gangster has a gun-toting kangaroo as a bodyguard. 4 stars. ( )

Lethem goes in yet another direction with this book, a hybrid 40's detective story placed in the future. In many ways its reminiscent of private eye films with the exception of 'evolved' animals that function as humans and drugs that can cause memory loss. I can't say its my favorite and pales in comparison to Motherless Brooklyn or Fortress of Solitude. It's mediocre and good for reading on the beach. ( )

I loved this. It is Lethem's debut novel, and it is so original and quirky that it is amazing that he manages to pull it all off. I will stick with my original description of the novel - Like Raymond Chandler and Philip K. Dick wrote a book together that was then edited by Lewis Carroll. Dystopian with a noir feel. And talking animals. I only wish there were a sequel. ( )

Hard-boiled detective novel mixed with some dystopian/sci-fi.

Conrad Metcalf is a private inquisitor (private investigator). His current case is shadowing his client's wife. But then his client is murdered and the whole case takes a dark turn.

The underlying detective story is pretty straightforward. The twist in this book are the sci-fi aspects.

- Scientists have learned how to force animals to evolve. Many of the characters in the books are animals who are essentially human. They walk, talk, work, wear clothes. But they're still treated as animals and can be owned. Killing one isn't considered murder.

- Similarly science has learned how to force babies to mature very quickly, but only mentally. Physically and emotionally they remain babies/toddlers, and are referred to as Baby Heads. It's a seriously weird aspect to the book.

- Everyone is addicted to a drug called "Make" issued for free by the government. This drug is snorted like cocaine, and causes people to forget or accept anything and everything.

- Society is run by Inquisors (police) who are all powerful, accountable to no one and completely corrupt.

- Each individual has a karma card, where good deeds increase karma and bad deeds decrease karma. Once you're out of karma, that's it - your body is frozen and put into storage.

Most of the sci-fi elements fit into the overall detective story. But honestly I have no idea why we're presented with the evolved animals and Baby Heads. Taking them out wouldn't really change this story. This was one of the author's early works and it feels like he was experimenting with some ideas - and this book feels like it may have been building a character and universe as the first book in a series. But no series follows, so we're left with some oddly introduced elements to the story.

The whole book has a snarky and cynical humor running through it which makes some of the dystopian elements feel funny. ( )

I must be missing something, because I found this book silly, boring and frustrating. I stuck through it because I had so many questions about the world the author created.
What are 'babyheads'? Are they baby bodies with adult brains? Do the grow up? Why would people want a babyhead? Why are they angry? Why would smart animals be useful if they are basically just acting as more humans? If the office takes karma away, who gives it? Are you always watched and some central office gives karma? If so, how does Metcalf get away with so much?
On top of all these questions, the characters were either incoherent with unexplained motivations or caricatures for any hard boiled detective story you've ever read. ( )

This is tasty futuristic/dystopian noir. It has several of the revolting aspects that make noir darker and seedier than "crime stories." There are things that the story hints at that makes astute readers want to pump the brakes. Such points are real risks that the author took, and I can appreciate that. (Example, what are these evolved animals and how corrupt are the physical interactions these future humans have with them? Taboos and immorality and...and. Are they still brutes if they talk and think and such? Maybe it's a good thing the author left some of this open ended and vague.)

The detective story: a private investigator who is a real louse anyway, gets a case that ends up terribly. Like a good noir story, nobody is saved. It's a bad day for everyone.

But the writing is somehow utterly engaging and the world-building with its strangeness is so curious.....

With more payoffs on a few of the elements, this is easily a five star read. Instead, some of the elements just seem too pointless. And this is certainly NOT a novel for *every* reader. It's a bit repulsive at points. But not gore...just cringe. Not crass. Just cringe. All noir (the streets flow with powder and gin). ( )

This was a fun and interesting read. Lethem has a great way with language, and manages to set up a very strange, dystopian, and disturbingly plausible future. There's a Newsweek blurb on the cover that sums it up perfectly: "Marries Chandler's style and Phillip K. Dick's vision". I understand that this is not typical of Lethem's work, but on the basis of this, I've picked up a couple of this other novels, and I'm looking forward to getting to them. ( )

I don't typically love genre fiction, but this one was so weird in how it messed with the genre that I found it really appealing. ( )

Very silly but very entertaining pastiche of Chandler. ( )

The characters in this story mix their own special blends of drugs to give them just what they need to get through life. This book is its own special blend of sub-genres – mostly detective noir with a heavy dash of cyberpunk and a sprinkling of dystopia. I think it was missing some addictol though, because I never had trouble putting it down. I liked it more toward the beginning, but it started getting tedious around the middle. Toward the end things picked back up, but there were things that annoyed me.

I haven’t read tons of them, but I’m not usually a big fan of detective noir. This one has a lot of the inevitable tropes. Some of them were slightly different from the norm, but it felt like the usual anyway. The main character, Metcalf, is a down and out male detective. He has an addiction to drugs. Usually I expect an addiction to alcohol and/or tobacco, but drugs are the thing in this book and they’re available for free because they help keep society under control. Metcalf had the inevitable problematic history with a woman, although in this case that problem was a bit different and moderately amusing. And of course Metcalf was trying to solve a case that nobody wanted him to work on. Very familiar stuff, although the setting itself was a bit outside the norm and I kind of liked the answer to the original murder mystery.

Despite the tropes, I enjoyed it more often than not. Metcalf has a dry sense of humor that appealed to me and provoked a few chuckles, although he was also crude at times. The cyberpunkish dystopian world had a lot of familiar aspects to it also, but it was reasonably interesting and not so overdone as to get on my nerves. (Cyberpunk is another subgenre I don’t usually do well with.) Metcalf’s questioning of various people and the types of things that happened grew repetitive, so that was one issue. If I’m going to read a mystery, I also prefer to see things done more logically and methodically. This was one of those stories where the main character repeatedly goes into things unprepared and figures things out more through dumb luck and intuition than by finding and assembling tangible clues.

Also just a note that my Kindle edition had several OCR errors, mostly in the form of missing or stray punctuation, with just a couple words that appeared to be misprinted because they looked similar to the intended word. It wasn’t the worst I’d ever seen, but a little distracting at times. I bought it on sale from Amazon U.S. in late 2019. ( )

Your average noir-style detective, going about his business, aside from some of the absurdities of life, like the kangaroo that's trying to kill him.

Or those kids who never really grow up, "babyheads" are they doped out, or genetically engineered? None of these questions are truly answered, but a detective story with a hearty dash of the absurd seems to be the goal of this story.

It's less raunchy than Crooked Little Vein, but it amps up the absurd. Still, quite fun. ( )

After reading Motherless Brooklyn it's taken me a while to read another Lethem just because I loved it so much. I felt like any other Lethem book could only be a disappointment. Wrong! Gun is nearly there for me. I felt that it got a bit weaker at the end with the resolution of the crime, but overall his characters and version of the near future were terrific. ( )

A hard-boiled detective with a Raymond Chandler mouth fights for justice in a near-future Oakland. What a wild ride! This novel is full of sheep and kangaroos that talk among other strange things, but manages to be very darkly humorous and wonderfully entertaining. While the dialogue and some of the narrative is downright campy at times, the story simmers with restrained guffaws of realism. Overall a stunning first novel and a riotous romp of triumph. "She was either looking good for fifty or bad for thirty-five..." ( )

Raymond Chandler meets Philip K Dick. An excellent read. ( )

The style and voice and plot are pure Raymond Chandler, set in a weird future of talking kangaroos and mind-altering drugs. It's a wild ride that's largely successful, though not as ambitious as other futuristic genre mash-ups (for example, China Mieville's The City and The City), in part because it hews pretty closely to a standard Chandler-esque plot and in part because the futuristic elements aren't quite as developed. Still, there are moments of sheer brilliance here. ( )

In his first novel, Lethem delighted me by doing a very canny impersonation of one of my favorites, [b:Raymond Chandler|2052|The Big Sleep|Raymond Chandler|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41AGA624Z5L._SL75_.jpg|1222673]. To the books detriment, though, this also caused me to compare Lethem's "private inquisitor", Conrad Metcalf, to Chandler's Philip Marlowe (one of my favorite characters in all of fiction), and Metcalf came up a little wanting. There's just something empty about Metcalf, something missing.

In the end, though, maybe that was the point. ( )

PI Conrad Metcalf investigates the death of a doctor in a futuristic California where the government distributes mind-numbing drugs and menial work is done by animals. Jail is suspended animation in a freezer and curiosity is banned. ( )

a hot Chandler retread. In future Oakland. Has all the ingredients: cynical gumshoe, bash or two over his head, authorities on the take, sex, violence, and an evolved kangaroo gunzel who keeps his heater in his pouch. OK, the writer may be too clever, too complicated, too plotting for most--but this is the book I wish I had written. Of course, I would have done it differently. In Oaxaca. With evolved wisecracking bicycles, pipelines, condos, and toilets. ( )

I can't believe I allowed this gem to languish so long. This is noir set in the near-distant future with a cast of characters which includes "evolved" animals ranging from Joey the kangaroo, a vicious thug, to sweet Dulcie the ewe, not to mention "evolved" babies, the Babyheads. P. I. (Private Inquisitor, not Private Investigator; in this future the only people who can ask questions are Inquisitors, Private or Government), Conrad Metcalf has been hired by a man accused of murder (and about to be "frozen" for that crime) to prove his innocence. Conrad must conduct his investigation in a world where everyone, including himself, relies on drugs with varying proportions of Forgetterol, Regreterol, Acceptol, Avoidol etc. etc., but always with a heaping dose of Addictol. Everyone must also carry a card showing their "Karma" number, which is constantly subject to reduction by government inquisitors.

What a unique and utterly cohesive world Lethem has created and what a unique genre--sci fi, dystopian, noir?--whatever--it totally works. The tone, too, is unique--depressing but funny. I totally loved this book. Highly recommended.

4 1/2 stars ( )

A dystopian novel is one of the categories for the 2016 reading challenge.
Synopsis: In a world where questions are socially unacceptable and sniffing drugs is the norm, Conrad Metcalf is a private inquisitor. He is the last hope for clients threatened with being frozen for their crimes. His latest client is accused of murdering a doctor who, coincidentally, had hired Metcalf to follow his wife then 'rough her up'. Metcalf soon finds that his client has been framed and that a crime boss and the inquisitors want someone to take the fall for the murder and they are not particular who that is - including Metcalf.
Review: While the writing is beautiful and the story somewhat interesting, I found the novel depressing. I do like procedural crime stories and noir, but this one failed to pull me into the story. The setting was so negative as to throw a pall over the tale and the characters; the only personality even slightly sympathetic was an evolved ape who had once been a private inquisitor. I was ready for the book to end several chapters before it did. ( )