Shadow Ticket
Published on 7. October 2025
Book
Hardback
304 pages
978-1-78733-633-9 (ISBN)
Description
A private eye is catapulted on to a continent-hopping journey that proves difficult to escape.
'A masterpiece... A vintage tale of adventure' Daily Telegraph
'Swing bands, spies and surreal danger... A wild ride' i Paper
'Brilliant fun... Rollicking' Washington Post
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 labour-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.
'Late Pynchon at his finest' Los Angeles Times
'So alive, so pleasurable' Megan Nolan
'Grabs you by the collar' New York Times
'A masterpiece... A vintage tale of adventure' Daily Telegraph
'Swing bands, spies and surreal danger... A wild ride' i Paper
'Brilliant fun... Rollicking' Washington Post
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 labour-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.
'Late Pynchon at his finest' Los Angeles Times
'So alive, so pleasurable' Megan Nolan
'Grabs you by the collar' New York Times
Reviews / Votes
Pynchon's gift has always been his ability to render America in its full strangeness . . . The book is full of exuberance. Pynchon's sentences themselves are so alive, so pleasurable . . . The fact that Shadow Ticket is brilliant and prescient isn't a surprise; that it exudes so much joy and sensuousness is -- Megan Nolan * Daily Telegraph * A living literary legend returns with a masterpiece. Featuring private eyes, Nazis and Soviets, Shadow Ticket reads like a vintage tale of adventure * Daily Telegraph * Brilliant fun . . . Rollicking . . . Pynchon's prose is still as balletically dazzling as the trick shot Lew teaches Hicks . . . It's not just that no one else writes quite like Pynchon; it's that no one even tries * Washington Post * Pynchon's livewire prose hops from subject to subject, joins the dots and makes patterns . . . [The novel] sets out with a song in its heart and mischievous spring in its step, but it edges into darkness * Guardian * A 1930s detective tale with a sucker punch ending . . . 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 * Los Angeles Times * Private eye Hicks McTaggart navigat[es] a world of swing bands, spies and surreal danger. A wild, genre-mashing ride from an elusive literary mind * i Paper * The American great returns . . . It's the Great Depression, and private eye Hicks McTaggart takes on a routine case that turns out to be anything but: think spies, swing musicians, interplanetary languages and paranormal intrigue * Guardian, Biggest Books of the Autumn * The greatest, wildest author of his generation -- Ian Rankin * Guardian * One of America's great writers -- Salman Rushdie * New York Times Book Review * A towering literary giant * GQ *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Dimensions
Height: 238 mm
Width: 155 mm
Thickness: 32 mm
Weight
504 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78733-633-9 (9781787336339)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
10/2025
Vintage Digital
€14.99
Available for download
Person
Thomas Pynchon is the author of V., The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, Slow Learner (a collection of short stories), Vineland, Mason & Dixon, Against the Day, Inherent Vice and Bleeding Edge. He received the National Book Award for Gravity's Rainbow in 1974.