INHERENT VICE

Ron McLarty's rough but honeyed voice is ideal for a story built around Doc Sportello, an aging P.I. who means to feel groovy no matter what. And yes, by groovy, he often just means stoned. Like Doc, McLarty's seen and read a lot, having recorded more than 100 books and won many AUDIOFILE Earphones Awards. He's even a bestselling novelist himself. Thomas Pynchon's also been around, having won the National Book Award for GRAVITY’S RAINBOW in 1974. An author best known for dense writing that makes readers scratch their heads, he's switched genres, here writing a crime novel set in California in the drug-rich 1970s. It’s an intoxicating compound of disciplined prose and dissolute characters. Even the wicked amuse. B.H.C. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2009]