Thomas Pynchon

If you like Thomas Pynchon, then another author whose work you might enjoy is Thomas McGuane. Try The Cadence of Grass for starters. There's something about the way his sentences curl back on themselves which is very Pynchon-like and satisfying. I visited America for the first time ever this summer and went into the huge bookshop on the Stanford campus. Shockingly they didn't have any McGuane on the shelves. I bought the new Patrick McGrath instead. His Asylum is truly chilling.

Recently recommended to me as the best crime novel ever set in Oxford or Cambridge (in my conlocutor's opinion edging out even Gaudy Night, my favourite) is Michael Innes' Operation Pax. I've ordered it second-hand. I like to get book recommendations from interesting people.