Pulp -- Charles Bukowski, Paperback

Opening with the exotic Lady Death entering the gumshoe-writer's seedy office in pursuit of a writer named Celine, this gritty noir satire demonstrates Charles Bukowski's own brand of humor and realism, opening up a landscape of seamy Los Angeles.

Bukowski's final novel is a surreal pastiche of the classic Mickey Spillane, Chandleresque private dick novel. The anti-hero protagonist, Nick Belane, is a lonely, middle-aged, egotistical, alcoholic private detective who is badly in need of some lucrative work, but what he gets is a series of increasingly strange assignments from a bizarre collection of clients.

He is asked to track down the long-dead French classical author Celine and an elusive red sparrow in a surreal mystery that has him crossing paths with aliens, heavies and even Lady Death herself. All the while, Belane is convincing himself that he's still a white-hot detective and that nobody can take him for a ride, or indeed make him feel he's losing his mind.

Pulp is essential fiction from Buk himself.