Jonathan Lethem's Gun, With Occasional Music has a fun, if not entirely original, premise -- it's a detective story set in a not-quite-dystopian future. The premise succeeds, in that the story is entertaining, depressing, and featuring a whodunit where the perpetrator is not immediately obvious. Our protagonist is a hard-boiled private eye in the classic mold, and the dialog is quite snappy. As a pastiche, it works fine. However, that's not all that's going on here.Sci-fi writers often seem to make choices solely to set up a cheap gag or to make an obvious point. However, much of Lethem's choices (the drug 'make', the evolution therapy allowing 'babyheads' and speaking animals, the role of the secret police) both advance the plot and allow for commentary -- the world post-Metcalf's wakeup is very different from the (messy) world he previously inhabited.
I'm glad someone finally wrote a novel with a kangaroo as a villain.
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