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Shadow Ticket
- Author
- Thomas Pynchon
- Narrator
- Edoardo Ballerini
- Publisher
- Random House
- Publish Date
- 7 October 2025
- Run Time
- 10 hours
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
Brought to you by Penguin.
A private eye is catapulted on to a continent-hopping journey that proves difficult to escape – from the bestselling, award-winning author of Gravity’s Rainbow.
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.
‘A masterpiece… A vintage tale of adventure’ Daily Telegraph
‘Brilliant fun… Rollicking’ Washington Post
(c) Thomas Pynchon 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025
Critics Review
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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
Daily Telegraph
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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The greatest, wildest author of his generation
Guardian
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One of America’s great writers
New York Times Book Review
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A towering literary giant
GQ
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Thomas Pynchon
- Narrator
- Edoardo Ballerini
- Duration
- 10 hours
- Release Date
- 7 October 2025
- ISBN
- 9781529974713
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Random House
- Genre
- Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general, Historical fiction, Crime and mystery: private investigator / amateur detectives, Crime and mystery: hard-boiled crime, noir fiction
Synopsis
Brought to you by Penguin.A private eye is catapulted on to a continent-hopping journey that proves difficult to escape – from the bestselling, award-winning author of Gravity’s Rainbow.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.‘A masterpiece… A vintage tale of adventure’ Daily Telegraph‘Brilliant fun… Rollicking’ Washington Post(c) Thomas Pynchon 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025
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