'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. ( )