A New York Times Bestseller • A New York Times Washington Post and Associated Press Notable
Book • Named a Best Book of the Year by The Los Angeles Times Vulture TIME The Guardian
The New Republic and LitHub The new novel from Thomas Pynchon author of Gravity's Rainbow
The Crying of Lot 49 Vineland and Inherent Vice . “A masterpiece.” — The Telegraph
“Bonkers and brilliant fun.” — The Washington Post “Late Pynchon at his finest. 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.” — The Los Angeles Times Milwaukee 1932 the Great
Depression going full blast repeal of Prohibition just around the corner Al Capone in the
federal pen the private investigation business shifting from labor-management relations to the
more domestic kind. Hicks McTaggart a onetime strikebreaker turned private eye thinks he’s
found job security until he gets sent out on what should be a routine case locating and
bringing back the heiress of a Wisconsin cheese fortune who’s taken a mind to go wandering.
Before he knows it he’s been shanghaied onto a transoceanic liner ending up eventually in
Hungary where there’s no shoreline a language from some other planet and enough pastry to see
any cop well into retirement—and of course no sign of the runaway heiress he’s supposed to be
chasing. By the time Hicks catches up with her he will find himself 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 none of which Hicks is qualified
forget about being paid to deal with. Surrounded by history he has no grasp on and can’t see
his way around in or out of 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.
