Milwaukee, 1932. Hicks McTaggart, a onetime strikebreaker turned private eye, thinks he’s found job security until he gets sent on what should be a routine case: locating the heiress of a Wisconsin cheese fortune. Before he knows it, he finds himself on a transoceanic liner, ending up eventually in Hungary where there’s no shoreline, a language from some other planet, and of course no sign of the runaway.

By the time Hicks catches up with her he is also entangled with Nazis, Soviet agents, British counterspies, swing musicians, practitioners of the paranormal, outlaw motorcyclists, and the troubles that come with each of them. Surrounded by history he has no grasp on, the only bright side for Hicks is it’s the dawn of the Big Band Era and as it happens he’s a pretty good dancer. Whether this will be enough to allow him somehow to Lindy-hop his way back again to Milwaukee and the normal world, which may no longer exist, is another question.

Pynchon’s gift has always been his ability to render America in its full strangeness . . . The book is full of exuberance. Pynchon’s sentences themselves are so alive, so pleasurable . . . The fact that Shadow Ticket is brilliant and prescient isn’t a surprise; that it exudes so much joy and sensuousness is -- Megan Nolan * Daily Telegraph *
A living literary legend returns with a masterpiece. Featuring private eyes, Nazis and Soviets, Shadow Ticket reads like a vintage tale of adventure * Daily Telegraph *
Brilliant fun . . . Rollicking . . . Pynchon’s prose is still as balletically dazzling as the trick shot Lew teaches Hicks . . . It’s not just that no one else writes quite like Pynchon; it’s that no one even tries * Washington Post *
Pynchon’s livewire prose hops from subject to subject, joins the dots and makes patterns . . . [The novel] sets out with a song in its heart and mischievous spring in its step, but it edges into darkness * Guardian *
A 1930s detective tale with a sucker punch ending . . . Dark as a vampire’s pocket, light-fingered as a jewel thief, Shadow Ticket capers across the page with breezy, baggy-pants assurance – and then pauses on its way down the fire escape just long enough to crack your heart open * Los Angeles Times *
Private eye Hicks McTaggart navigat[es] a world of swing bands, spies and surreal danger. A wild, genre-mashing ride from an elusive literary mind * i Paper *
The American great returns . . . It’s the Great Depression, and private eye Hicks McTaggart takes on a routine case that turns out to be anything but: think spies, swing musicians, interplanetary languages and paranormal intrigue * Guardian, Biggest Books of the Autumn *
The greatest, wildest author of his generation -- Ian Rankin * Guardian *
One of America’s great writers -- Salman Rushdie * New York Times Book Review *
A towering literary giant * GQ *

Thomas Pynchon is the author of V., The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, Slow Learner (a collection of short stories), Vineland, Mason & Dixon, Against the Day, Inherent Vice and Bleeding Edge. He received the National Book Award for Gravity's Rainbow in 1974.