Review of Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon

Let's face it. Nobody expects fresh material from Thomas Pynchon. If the internets are to be believed, the man—if he is a human—is eighty-eight years old. Well past retirement age, readers have no reason to anticipate a new novel. He already produced a literal trove of some of the best fiction of the 20th century. And yet in 2025 a new Pynchon novel is dropping. Flapper life, the tail-end of prohibition, the American midwest, and the rise of Hitler feature heavily in the noir of Shadow Ticket.

Shadow Ticket kicks off, like any good noir, with a seemingly innocuous crime. A small-time Milwaukee gangster gets himself blown up in a car, and private eye Hicks McTaggart (great name) must find the culprit. His investigation takes him to a local cheese baron, Bruno Airmont, who informs McTaggart of his daughter Daphne's disappearance. Illicit activities are all around, meaning the investigation is not without danger. When a bomb attempt on McTaggart's life cuts a little too close, the private eye heads to New York where he is duped into another journey, one that takes him closer to Daphne and wider happenings in the world of fascism.

Shadow Ticket is classic Pynchon. It has all the alliteration, hop-skip-jump dialogue, irascible characters, and subtle leaps of plot a familiar reader would expect. The novel delights the eyeballs and tickles the brain.

Shadow Ticket is likewise an excellent specimen of noir. Pynchon channels his inner Hammett and Chandler. A murder mystery drives the plot but somehow feels secondary to the larger concerns of the setting and the world weary main character who encounters socio-political implications that continually expand. There is a thematic undercurrent that steadily builds into a riptide.

Pynchon can have the reader agape at the end of Shadow Ticket. No spoilers, but thematically it leaves the reader in a place entirely parallel to our own 2025 socio-political circumstances—something the flappers 1930s Milwaukee intro does not immediately bely. Social chaos, a building wave of socialism, a world seemingly on the brink of something—the reader is forced to reflect how humans cannot stop being humans, and how diverse yet repetitive history can be. That simple noir plot of a private eye investigating small-city crime somehow become representative of a chunk of contemporary Western life.

But for as relevant as its theme is, Shadow Ticket does not run as deep as prior Pynchon novels. There are reviews stating it's as wide but not as profound, and Pynchon vets will likely agree. Most will likely find another piece of Pynchon noir, Inherent Vice, the richer, more sophisticated experience. That being said, the novel is a huge spot of fun, and a good Pynchon novel is still better than 95% of the market.

It's enjoyable to ponder book titles. Most often the meaning is obvious—The Handmaid's Tale, The City & the City, Dracula, etc.) But sometimes a little thought is needed (Lord of the Rings, Roadside Picnic, Too Like the Lightning, Cloud Atlas, etc.), which is where Pynchon's often fall. Shadow Ticket may be one of his best. It answers the question: how have we gotten to the state of society and politics that we are in? It happened, but seemingly suddenly. How? Undoubtedly the average German had to look in the mirror after WWII and ask: how did I end up supporting a regime which attempted genocide? The average person in the West today probably has a similar question: How did we end up where we are? Both questions have the same answer: a shadow ticket. You bought one and didn't know it.

In the end, Shadow Ticket shows few signs it was produced by a writer two years shy of his 100th decade. The prose is sharp, the plot is sprightly, and theme is a silent killer—it sneaks up on you, cutting to the bone in the final pages. It works the magic of capturing our socio-political zeitgeist though the lens of a dynamic presentation of the 1930s.