Name: Daryl Houston's review of The Feral Detective by Jonathan Lethem
Item: The Feral Detective
Rating: 3
Author: Daryl Houston

Jonathan Lethem

Jonathan Lethem’s first detective novel since Motherless Brooklyn “One of America’s greatest storytellers.” —Washington Post Phoebe Siegler first meets Charles Heist in a shabby trailer on the eastern edge of Los Angeles. She’s looking for her friend’s missing daughter, Arabella, and hires Heist to help. A laconic loner who keeps his pet opossum in a desk drawer, Heist intrigues the sarcastic and garrulous Phoebe. Reluctantly, he agrees to help. The unlikely pair navigate the enclaves of desert-dwelling vagabonds and find that Arabella is in serious trouble—caught in the middle of a violent standoff that only Heist, mysteriously, can end. Phoebe’s trip to the desert was always going to be strange, but it was never supposed to be dangerous. . . . Jonathan Lethem’s first detective novel since Motherless Brooklyn, The Feral Detective is a singular achievement by one of our greatest writers.

A Novel

The Feral Detective

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Daryl Houston

This is not my favorite Lethem by miles. It was fine but just didn't click as much for me as some of his others have. There's certainly more going on than I spent real time trying to figure out -- sort of a fable, some political stuff, some stuff about dualism or reconciling contradictions, some stuff about tribalism and othering, and how all these things relate to one another -- and that's all very interesting, but neither these things nor the book's story grabbed me hard enough that I felt compelled to engage really deeply with what Lethem was doing.

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The Feral Detective by Jonathan Lethem

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The Feral Detective by Jonathan Lethem