This book is a classic Pynchon novel except that it's completely accessible, unlike his actual classic, Gravity's Rainbow. Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield titled his review of Inherent Vice "The Bigger Lebowski", and this is absolutely the truth, convincingly supported by the fact that Ron McLarty's voice work here could easily be mistaken for Jeff Bridges. Pynchon's hippie hero is Larry "Doc" Sportello, a private dick whose skills of detection are not so much hard-boiled as drug-addled. McLarty's low, gritty tones are a perfect fit for Doc's pot-smoked antics in this filmic noir.

When Sportello's ex-girlfriend turns to him for help in anticipation of her billionaire boyfriend's future kidnapping, things quickly and naturally get complicated in the winter of 1970. Let's just say it involves a motley crew of surfers, strippers, junkies, scammers, hippies, and loonies, a shady posse known as the Golden Fang that are either mafioso or dentists, 20 kilos of heroin, and a coffin full of funny money with Nixon's face on it. Of course, the Sherlock Holmes to Doc's Watson and also the perpetual rain on his parade is straight-laced cop cowboy Bigfoot Bjornsen. Bigfoot and Doc's fundamentally different worldviews put them in constant conflict on the same case, leaning on one another while stepping on each other's toes. McLarty doesn't miss a beat in his portrayal of their hilarious and timeless debate between authoritarianism and communalism.

There are trademark Pynchon motifs throughout the story that devotees of the author will be glad to see. The Southern California setting is where Pynchon is at his very best, and his deep knowledge of music is definitely in evidence. McLarty is even forced to sing several surf rock tunes, which he does with surprising alacrity. There is the author's usual consideration of race wars and imperialism, where McLarty does convincing Hispanic and Asia-Pacific accents of various kinds common to the region. There is the extensive set of acronyms and anagrams, where McLarty somehow manages not to laugh while referring to things like the hippy-busting cop squad known as "P-DIDdies", short for "Public Disorder Intelligence Division".

This is Pynchon at his most readable, and he sticks to driving the plot with relatively few digressions. Still, this is also Pynchon at his most recognizable. Though the tale is finely tuned to resemble such cult gems as The Big Lebowski, no other author could have cranked it out quite so colorfully. Thomas Pynchon isn't taking any easy outs with this one. He took a beloved story and crafted a fleshy parallel, which Ron McLarty lovingly gives voice to a style that will not disappoint even the most die-hard fans of either Pynchon or Lebowski. Megan Volpert