Book Review: "The Feral Detective" by Johnathan Lethem

The Feral Detective by Jonathan Lethem
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

American author Jonathan Lethem returns to the detective genre with "The Feral Detective." I read the eBook, 336 pages. published November 6th 2018 by Ecco. This is another of Lethem's quirky, Alt-Detective detective novels, following "Gun, with Occasional Music" and "Motherless Brooklyn." Which leads us to Caution Number One: This is not Mickey Spillane or Dashiell Hammett.

The skeleton of the story is simple. Phoebe Siegler is an attractive New Yorker looking for a missing teenage girl. Phoebe engages the aid of Charles Heist, a hunky and mysterious detective. They begin criss-crossing the Inland Empire between Los Angeles and the Mojave Desert. As the novel progresses, they go deeper and deeper into the desert, both geographically and metaphorically. I am trying to avoid spoilers here. If you are a fan of the genre, you have enough to go on at this point.

Reading the first act of Letham's novel, I was struck with a familiarity that I could not quite pin down. Granted, I know the geographic setting for the story, but it was more than that. As the story moved through the shabby fringe realm that borders the Mojave Desert, the familiarity began to take shape. The Feral Detective was bringing back memories of Thomas Pynchon's novel "The Crying of Lot 49." I mean this comparison only in a thematic, descriptive way. It is a compliment to both authors, and a bit unsettling as well. So, a touch of the Pynchon-esque: Remember Caution Number One.

Caution Number Two: This novel has more than enough of the satirical to go around. Different groups of folks are going to be irritated, or even angered, by different sections of the book. The story begins with a very specific political slant that may have one demographic slamming shut the cover, whilst another demographic nods in sad, thoughtful agreement. My advice would be to not get too comfortable. Things are going to change. Blue and Red are both going to get their comeuppance. The same is true for drum-beaters of the Men's Movement and their Feminist counterparts. No one is getting out of this story with their precious Dogma fully intact.

There is enough of the Detective genre to carry the plot, and carry it quite well, but that is not what we are here for. It is true that Charles and Phoebe are detecting away in the Mojave, circling further and further off the grid. At the same time, the reader is being taken on another journey, one of colliding cultures; a clash of deeply held, diametrically opposed beliefs. This is where the Dogmas take 'a good slap in the mouth or a slug from a forty-five,' to quote Woody Allen quoting Bogart. The damaging of Dogma is going to piss off various readers at various points. See Caution Number Two.

There are Dogs in the works as well, and a Feral Child. These characters (yes, the dogs are characters) run on instinct rather than frontal lobe workings. As such, they have an easier time navigating the twists and turns of the strange landscape that Phoebe are Charles are inhabiting.

A reader who requires tidy bows neatly tied may not be thrilled with "The Feral Detective." But loose ends are not always a bad thing, even in the classic detective tales. Think of the film The Big Sleep, for example. Or the spin-off from that film, The Big Lebowski: "Well, Dude, we just don't know."

I recommend "The Feral Detective" for a number of reasons. First, Jonathan Lethem is a top-notch writer; creative, imaginative, and challenging. Second, everyone needs to have their firmly-held beliefs shaken, if not stirred; myself included. No one emerges from the story unscathed. I like that.
As an aside recommendation, if you read this novel and enjoy it, double back to Lethem's "Gun, with Occasional Music."

Thanks for taking the time to check out my review and, as always, Happy Reading!

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