The good news about Shadow Ticket —the new Thomas Pynchon novel and his first in 12 years—is that it’s one of his private-eye stories. Fictional gumshoes make ideal Pynchon protagonists, guys not in it for anything much beyond the next check, but required to go around poking their noses where they don’t belong. Hicks McTaggart, the hero (as such) of Shadow Ticket is perpetually bemused as he bounces off gangsters, federal agents, international jewel thieves posing as international playboys, motorcycle gangs, and jazz musicians in Depression-era Milwaukee and, eventually, improbably, Budapest.

The bad news is that the novel is set in 1932, so there are lots of the tedious song lyrics of which Pynchon is lamentably fond. Also, everyone talks like a character in an old movie; the (typica

See Full Page