MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN by Jonathan Lethem

Lionel, the narrator of this noir crime novel, has Tourette’s syndrome, which causes him to utter nonsensical words and to touch things he has no business touching.  He works for L&L Car Service in Brooklyn, but it’s really a detective agency—kind of.  L&L’s owner is Frank Minna, who recruited all of his “agents” from an orphanage when they were teenagers.  Minna dies of a stab wound early in the novel, and Lionel decides to become a true detective and investigate Minna’s murder.  Dubbed “Freakshow” by Minna, he battles his Tourette’s every step of the way, but he is probably the smartest of the Minna men and therefore may have the best shot at discovering the truth.  Basically, this is a book about small-time wiseguys who don’t even carry firearms.  The author does a great job of generating a mood that mimics early twentieth century crime novels where the detective wore a fedora.  This novel even has a shady femme fatale in the person of Julia, Minna’s widow, who hightails it out of town as soon as she hears the news of her husband’s death.  The villains are a pair of mobsters, Matricardi and Rockaforte, known as The Clients, and the Fujisaki Corporation, which may be using a Zen studio as a front.  The conclusion of the book is a little rushed and not totally crystal clear to me, but the writing is excellent.  At one point, Lionel describes his tongue as feeling like “it had been bound in horseradish-and-cola-soaked plaster and left out on the moon overnight.”  Even if the storyline is a little thin, Lionel and his trippy exclamations are worth the ride.