SOURCE: "Lady Death and Aliens from the Planet Zaros," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, October 30, 1994, p. 11.

In the following, Lochte summarizes and favorably reviews Pulp.

Private eye Nick Belane sits in his sleazy downtown L.A. office, alone and lonely. It's hot outside and his air conditioner is on the fritz. His rent is overdue. He looks at a fly crawling across the top of his desk. Ever since the prime of Raymond Chandler, and probably long before that, fictional private eyes have been sitting at their desks, sweating and studying flies. But Pulp's Belane is a little different. A woozily parodic creation of the swirling mind of the late writer-poet Charles Bukowski, he is both earthier and more fanciful than his predecessors. And his pursuits are certainly more literary.

For example, Chandler's Philip Marlowe (in the novel The Little Sister) uses a swatter on his...