The Crying Lot 49

Thomas Pynchon — alongside Salinger, the "great American recluse," is one of the largest writers of world literature of the 20th and now the 21st century, unanimously recognized as a classic on par with Nabokov, Joyce, and Borges since his first publications. "The Crying Lot 49" is an intellectual mystery novel, a metaphysical detective story, and a postmodern mystery. Pynchon expertly and compactly develops his favorite themes of universal conspiracy and social paranoia. The main character discovers one fine day that she has been appointed the executor of her former lover's estate — a California magnate. Soon, frightening revelations begin to multiply in geometric progression, and random words and symbols point to an omnipotent secret organization that has its origins in medieval Europe...
"Virtuosic prose, Joycean intricate symbolism, the quest for the Holy Grail in a new way — that is what 'The Crying Lot 49' is about" (Chicago Tribune).