Not under the influence of Blanketrol

I expected GUN, WITH OCCASIONAL MUSIC from its noir opening to get so far away from the case at hand that I would no longer care about who killed who when the pieces were put together -- and I was right. At one point antihero P.I. Conrad Metcalf leaves a really, really weird bar to go track down a lead related to the murder of urologist Maynard Stanhunt and I'm thinking, "No! Go back to the bar!" I started agreeing with the official investigators against whose wishes Metcalf continues his work that, well, dead was dead, might as well start some trouble.

But there's so much to latch onto here I didn't expect one casual detail to occupy my thinking. Metcalf works in a world where everyone earns or is docked "karma" points by the police (sort of like the whuffie system Cory Doctorow uses in DOWN AND OUT IN THE MAGIC KINGDOM), hormones allow animals to live and work with humans and everyone snorts a combination of legally available drugs. All of these ideas could have been developed into full dystopias, but instead knock around against each other -- not so much world-building as world-piling.

Among the jumble is Metcalf casually mentioning his particular physical defect which (to write around it) is related to that classic of the archetype, the disdain for the dame. It stuck with me so far that I wanted to be reading that book; it was the supporting character whose 10 minutes in the movie were the best 10 minutes, and why wasn't I watching that movie? Well, because that movie didn't get made. Thus, the power of the author.

Whether you like GUN, WITH OCCASIONAL MUSIC or not will depend on your tolerance for such frustration. Despite the everything-and-the-kitchen-sinkness and the absence of any real plot-based tension beyond the first 50 pages, I sped through it, although the last few chapters deliver another twist that I wanted to see spun out at length but knew wouldn't get nearly that much attention. I know, I should have gone for Chandler if I wanted the resolution to matter, but Chandler doesn't write for talking kangaroos. (Kangaroo : Lethem :: bear : Irving?)