Hate to tell you but the only time ‘real’ comes into it is when they’re shooting at you. In practice, ‘real’ means dead—anything else, there’s always room for some conversation.
Shadow Ticket is a novel written by Thomas Pynchon. Released in 2025, it tells of a private eye looking for a Wisconsin heiress.
Characters[]
- Hicks McTaggart
rest to be added
Publisher's summary[]
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 one-time 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.
See also[]
| Title | Author | Release date | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gravity's Rainbow | Thomas Pynchon | 1973 | A novel by the same author with a similar setting and similar themes |
| The Devil Aspect | Craig Russell | 2019 | A novel with somewhat similar themes |
| You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up | Richard Hallas | 1938 | A novel with somewhat similar themes |
Sources[]
- Wikipedia
- Goodreads
| Works of Thomas Pynchon | ||
|
Early works (Collected in Slow Learner) | ||