Inherent Vice

Thomas Pynchon's shortest novel since The Crying of Lot 49 and by some distance the most straightforward (and the funniest) thing he's ever published, Inherent Vice is both a parody of hardboiled-detective fiction and a fond elegy for the waning days of southern California's freak scene, circa 1970. Amiable private detective and psychedelic surfer dude Larry "Doc" Sportello gets thrown into an increasingly surreal case involving his groovy ex-old lady, her new real estate developer boyfriend, Doc's longtime cop nemesis, a dead surf-rock saxophonist, and a shadowy organization that just may be behind the whole thing. Aside from the uncharacteristically linear plotting, the book's greatest pleasures are in the campily stylized dialogue, Sportello's deadpan absurdism, the gleefully unhinged supporting characters, and Pynchon's obvious fondness for its time and place. (Pynchon crams in so many great obscure musical references that the legendary recluse has posted a playlist of some of his favorite tracks at Amazon!) Hardcore Pynchon fans -- and for that matter, serious students of the James Ellroy school of modern L.A. noir -- may well find Inherent Vice disappointingly frivolous. But, hey, even post-modernists need a good beach read now and then.