{"id":7716,"date":"2019-01-21T07:49:50","date_gmt":"2019-01-21T12:49:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7716"},"modified":"2019-01-21T07:50:00","modified_gmt":"2019-01-21T12:50:00","slug":"the-feral-detective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7716","title":{"rendered":"*****The Feral Detective"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Jonathan Lethem \u2013 Jonathan Lethem, who has been called\none of America\u2019s greatest storytellers, returns to crime fiction with this new\nnovel, The Feral Detective. It opens with the narrator, Manhattanite Phoebe\nSiegler, searching for her best friend\u2019s teenage daughter, Arabella, who has\ndisappeared from Reed College. Her trail has led to the small California town\nof Upland, east of Los Angeles. It\u2019s at the edge of the San Gabriel Mountains,\na short drive to the mountains\u2019 highest peak, Mount Baldy, and within striking\ndistance of wilderness and desert, vividly described settings as bleak and\nuntamed as the situations Phoebe will encounter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The local police, loathe to put any energy into a search for\nArabella, pass Phoebe on to a social worker who specializes in runaways, and\nthe social worker refers her to The Feral Detective, Charles Heist. Phoebe\u2019s\ntold that, though Heist\u2019s methods may be unorthodox, he\u2019s a good man on a cold\ntrail, an expert in rescuing runaways and teenagers snared in cults or human\ntrafficking networks. In fact, Phoebe learns, one such teen lives in an armoire\nin his office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heist\u2019s unique set of skills and experiences sets you up for\na strange romp through the underbelly of California society. Scanning Heist\u2019s\nunpromising office building, Phoebe says,\u201cTo make an appointment here was to\nhave dropped through the floor of your life, out of ordinary time. You weren\u2019t\nmeant to be here at all, if you were me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phoebe\u2019s New York temperament is distinctly at odds with\nthat of the Californians, and she\u2019s pegged it; she wasn\u2019t meant to be there.\nBut Phoebe already has dropped through the floor of her life, first by quitting\nher job at a major newspaper because she couldn\u2019t tolerate the prospect of the\nTrump presidency. She can\u2019t fathom why the Californians aren\u2019t similarly\noutraged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She\u2019s thirty-three, with no immediate employment prospects,\na lot of anger, and dubious romantic feelings about Charles Heist. Her reflexive\nwisecracking is balanced by despair, a weak shield against reality. Lethem lets\nher be defensive, show poor judgment, and lash out when it would be better not\nto. She\u2019s not perfect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Road trips into the area surrounding Upland, with and\nwithout Heist, lead her to some sketchy places and characters. Heist has\nmysterious connections with these troubled people that the New Yorker cannot\nunderstand. Phoebe is drawn to the taciturn feral detective, though their\nmismatched relationship seems most likely to go awry. But perhaps he can give\nher the anchor in life she so obviously needs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lethem writes strong prose, with more than a sprinkling of\nappreciation for the ridiculous. Lovers of literary crime fiction will find\nLethem has created interesting and engaging characters in Phoebe and Heist, as\nwell as an array of distinctive secondary characters\u2014and some dogs\u2014whose fates\nare worth caring about. He never lets up in describing people, places,\nsituations, and feelings in fresh and memorable ways. Several review sites\nincluded it among the top crime books of 2018, though I\u2019ve noted that Amazon\nreaders don\u2019t much like it and seem to have missed the humor altogether. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lethem\u2019s previous detective fiction, Motherless Brooklyn<\/em>, won the National Book Critics Circle Award. It\nwas narrated by a man with Tourette\u2019s Syndrome\u2014sympathetically. In this new\nwork, the characters are less overtly damaged, but the damage is there, not far\nbelow the surface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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rabbit photo by wbaiv, creative commons license<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases\u2014a few pennies to put in a jar to pay my WordPress bills. When you make a purchase by clicking on the book cover above, you help me fill the jar. Thank you!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jonathan Lethem \u2013 Jonathan Lethem, who has been called one of America\u2019s greatest storytellers, returns to crime fiction with this new novel, The Feral Detective. It opens with the narrator, Manhattanite Phoebe Siegler, searching for her best friend\u2019s teenage … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7717,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"*****The Feral Detective - a literary detective novel, by turns hilarious and harrowing, in which an out-of-place Manhattanite cruises California's fringiest cultures","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1288,54,40,126],"tags":[1483,1484],"class_list":["post-7716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-detective","category-fiction","category-reading-2","tag-jonathan-lethem","tag-the-feral-detective"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/rabbit.jpg?fit=278%2C342&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-20s","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7716"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7718,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7716\/revisions\/7718"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}