Pynchon’s unique blend of wackiness and wistfulness permeates every page. He uses words as carefully as Nabokov. Inherent Vice works brilliantly as both a neon-lit neo-noir and as a psychedelic lament to the Sixties
Sunday Telegraph

The intellectual game-play is characteristically dazzling…colourful and pleasurable
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney, FT

A blast of psychedelic paisley noir; both brilliant and brain boggling by turns
Helen Brown, Daily Mail

Shorter and easier to read than any of Pynchon’s previous novels…characteristically hilarious and thought-provoking
Thomas Jones, The London Review of Books

Pynchon leaves the rest of the American literary establishment at the starting gate...the range over which he moves is extraordinary, not simply in terms of ideas explored but also in the range of emotions he takes you through
Time Out

The most important and mysterious writer of his generation
Time

Throughout Pynchon’s style is spot-on, capturing what Hunter S Thompson called the high, wild sound of the era, a sense of enthusiasm and boundless opportunity, even though you know the times are changing, and not necessarily in your favour…Pychon continues to draw his inspiration from genre fiction and pulp. Its more fun this way
Alastair Mabbott, The Herald

Often very funny…may be his most readable novel. Remarkably, it features both a sympathetic protagonist and a recognisable plot, albeit one that is as impossible to summarise as any other Pynchon shaggy dog tale
Sarah Churchwell, The Observer

One of America’s most wilful and obscure writers has produced the most enjoyable beach read of the summer
Tim Martin, Saturday Telegraph

It is all a bit silly, really, but handled with an affable, zonked-out yet penetrating prose, is as much fun to read as anything you will come across this summer
Nicholas Lezard, London Evening Standard

Full of superb dialogue and lovely descriptive passages’
John Dugdale, Sunday Times

By far [Pynchon’s] most accessible novel since The Crying of Lot 49, and at least as funny as his zany behemoth Against the Day…this is a loveable, kooky version of noir detective fiction, but with the shadows of genuine darkness at its edges…Inherent Vice is Pynchon on an idiosyncratic frolic, and what a joy it is. He is the only truly Dickensian talent of our time
Stuart Kelly, Scotland on Sunday

True believers will be relieved to note, however, that despite its concessions to readability and fun, Inherent Vice has all the trademark Pynchon silliness…beneath all this mayhem and fun, however, Inherent Vice is a serious, even brooding, book
Aravind Adiga, The Times

a bright, breezy, funny page-turner…Best of all, however, is the way Pynchon maps the psycho-geography and shifting socio-political sands of America at the time
Alan Chadwick, Metro

Inherent Vice has more heart than any other Pynchon … an anatomy or perhaps an astrology of hipness … sun-kissed, psychedelic and sexually-enhanced, Pynchon has re-embodied, re-grooved the soul of the Sixties
Andy Martin, ndependent

You don’t have to have been there; if you’re willing, he’ll take you there
Michael Carlson, Spectator

Pynchon’s pastiche is pitch-perfect, and extremely funny… the novel works superbly as a thriller. But we also get a brilliantly lurid snapshot of a world starting to unravel
Henry Power, Literary Review

The [novel’s] sentences have their stately beauty, and Pynchon is poignantly good on the heartsick detective… There are tremendously pacy comic set pieces… and a nostalgic delight in 1960s types
David Flusfeder, New Statesman

Like all Pynchon’s novels, short or long, it is an almost hermetically sealed world, which you can navigate best by surrendering to authorial sensibilities….Inherent Vice is Pynchon looking back at an era, caught up in its own stoned entropy, and looking back on himself…You don’t have to have been there; if you’re willing, he’ll take you there
Michael Carlson, The Spectator

With his most accessible book to date – half Chinatown, half Fear and loathing, all searing jeremiad about the modern American Soil – he may have come up with something even th e British literati can read
Thomas Leveritt, Independent on Sunday

[An] absorbing and frequently funny crime novel…unmistakably Pynchon; as funny, angry and wistful as ever
TLS

Handled with an affable, zonked-out yet penetrating prose, [this] is as much fun as anything you will come across this summer
Nicholas Lezard, The Scotsman

The experience of reading the novel is probably as close to getting stoned as reading a novel can be. It brings on fits of the giggles and paranoia jags…It doesn’t, however, make you fall asleep…characteristically hilarious and thought-provoking
Thomas Jones, London Review of Books

Tremendously enjoyable
Matt Thorne, Catholic Herald

Thomas Pynchon…blended Chandler-esque noir with pastoral comedy
Boyd Tonkin, Independent

The pioneering work in a genre you’d have to call psychedelic Noir …Who writes sentences as beautiful as Pynchon?
Sam Leith, Daily Mail

Phantasmagorical
Seven Magazine, Sunday Telegraph

Serves up the author’s trademark blend of pop culture, conspiracy theories and quirky characters
Angel Gurria-Quintana, Financial Times, Fiction Books of the Year

His most relaxed and enjoyable work since Gravity’s Rainbow
Morgan Kelly, Irish Times, Books of the Year

Presiding genius of American weird fiction
The Telegraph, Review Magazine