association-list

Like most detec­tive sto­ries, the rev­e­la­tion at the ending can never quite live up to the ten­sion gen­er­ated by the nar­ra­tive prior, and the whole thing sags and col­lapses like a cut string. That said, I felt like this was one of the more sat­is­fy­ing books of Lethem’s that I’d read, mostly on the strength and inven­tive­ness of the prose. Lethem does an absolutely won­der­ful job con­vinc­ingly limn­ing the inte­rior state of his Touret­tic pro­tag­o­nist, and the writ­ing, never less than good, at times rises to bril­liance. I’m glad that I finally got around to read­ing this, and it was more than good enough to over­whelm my gen­eral dis­taste for mys­ter­ies and crime fic­tion in general.