I doubt whether any book would entice me more than a horrible hybrid of crimefiction, speculative fantasy, weird religion and postmodernism. If that makes Jeff Noon’s third outing of the private detective John Nyquist sound like a niche affair I apologise, as it is a rollicking and goose-flesh- inducing novel.
Writers such as the late Gilbert Adair have already used the forms of the murder mystery to explore avant-garde ideas, especially in his Evadne Mount trilogy. Noon — the author of those modern classics Automated Alice and Vurt — has created the ultimate mash-up with his Nyquist novels. There is a small joke for bibliophilic readers on the back cover. Whereas normally one gets simple descriptors (Memoir/ History/ Crime/ Travel), Creeping Jenny has ‘File Under: Everyday Saints /Not the Ravens /Fatherland /Written in Blood.’ In a way, that says it all.
You do not have to have read the previous novels, A Man of Shadows and The Body Library, to be entranced by Creeping Jenny, although there are some references to previous events.
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