Thomas Pynchon’s bootleg noir Shadow Ticket lets sentiment and satire share the same booth

At 88, Pynchon returns not with a late-style valediction but with a quickstep. Shadow Ticket is his first novel in 12 years and it refuses the wintry hush many expected. Instead we get a brisk, funny, clear-eyed noir set in 1932 Milwaukee, a city of beer, bootleggers and brittle loyalties.