This was published in the UK by Faber, so you know we’re dealing with a Proper Writer here, and the book was a critical and popular hit well beyond the crime genre when it came out, apparently. You can see why. It’s really very well-written. The central character, a low-grade hood with Tourette’s, sounds dreadful but in fact is great, and allows the author to have all sorts of fun messing around with language. There’s a twisty plot, conspiracies, mystery, some good jokes, a hint of post-modern genre fluidity. Enough to hook anyone. Certainly plenty for anyone to enjoy here, and probably a book that stands re-reading.
There’s a couple of minor things that smell off, though. Whether they’re actually off depends on what you think the limits of pastiche are. The book follows Lionel, our Tourettic hero, as he tries to find out who killed his boss and mentor Frank Minna. Lionel and his three fellow “Minna Men” were scooped up by Frank from an orphans’ home and set to work on his slightly shady endeavours in the more unrefined areas of New York (which are now, 25 years later, thoroughly gentrified). Lionel sees Frank as a beloved father figure, and so the investigation into his death is personal and reflective as well as objective and prospective.
So we have two things going on here. One: a crime plot, in a neo-noir style, with all the tropes and moves one would expect from that. There are shadowy stakeouts, a femme fatale or sorts, crime bosses and hired goons, cigarettes glowing in the dark… you get the idea. Two: a New York novel, a paean to how things were and are there and a lament for how they will be, a Brooklyn bildungsroman.
OK, now, the first of these things is I think clearly done in the vein of pastiche. There’s obvious absurdity in having your detective full of tics, and we surely aren’t meant to take all the twists of the crime stuff seriously, so silly are some of them. This probably means we can let Lethem off with the various stock characters and stereotypes that populate the plot, though he does sail close to the wind of offence once it becomes clear that the really top mobsters are a bunch of Japanese gangsters who’ve cornered the urchin egg trade. After all, pastiches trade in stock, don’t they?
So I’m fine with the crime bit, but you might find it a bit too knowing. What about the second thing, the New York novel? Well, I think this is meant to be straight: I don’t think it’s meant as pastiche. But a lot of it sounds like a parody of someone rhapsodising the beloved rough city of their youth, dwelling fondly in the remaining grime of its present, and sadly anticipating the smooth clean thing it’ll become. This is at its worst in the 50-page backstory bit that arrives after a pretty engaging 40-page opening and completely kills the momentum as we hear all about the Home for Boys and the basketball courts and how old Brooklyn was a place where things were understood between people and blah blah blah. I just feel I’ve read far too many people who really love New York bang on about how great New York is, and more especially how great it was, and they all do it in the same kind of way, and, yeah. I think Lethem is doing this.
The only thing is, perhaps he’s not? Perhaps these bits are pastiche too? They could be, they’re so on the nose of what you’d expect. If they are, it’s subtle, and you have to wonder when a pastiche is so close that becomes the real thing. Maybe you have to wonder that with the crime bit too? I think I’ve confused myself now.