The Crying of Lot 49A witty, chaotic and brilliant novel from the incomparable Thomas Pynchon. By far the shortest of Pynchon's great, dazzling novels and one of the best. Suffused with rich satire, chaotic brilliance, verbal turbulence and wild humour, The Crying of Lot 49 opens as Oedipa Maas discovers that she has been made executrix of a former lover's estate. The performance of her duties sets her on a strange trail of detection, in which bizarre characters crowd in