Overview

• The novel arrives next week from Penguin Press, marking Thomas Pynchon's ninth book and his return after a 12-year gap.
• Set in Depression-era Milwaukee, the story follows Hicks McTaggart, a hard-boiled investigator tasked with finding a runaway cheese heiress.
• The plot widens into transatlantic intrigue with Nazi sympathizers, paramilitary threads, and even gun-running across Lake Michigan.
• Critics describe lively prose, a playful-to-dark tonal shift, and a powerful closing movement, with the Los Angeles Times calling it late Pynchon at his finest.
• Reviewers situate the book within Pynchon's detective turn and broader 20th-century chronicle, suggesting it fills the 1930s slot and invites present-day parallels.