John Gregory Dunne's new novel [Dutch Shea Jr.] has its roots in John O'Hara's Appointment in Samarra, George V. Higgins' Kennedy for the Defense, James T. Farrell's Studs Lonigan, James Joyce's Ulysses, and any number of Ross Macdonald's "Lew Archer" mystery novels. For all that, Dutch Shea, Jr. is an original: a very serious, very funny, very Irish-Catholic, very suspenseful and—when all is said and done—altogether marvelous book.

Outlining its complicated plot is like trying to describe a spiral staircase without using one's hands. Dutch Shea, Jr. is a criminal lawyer. (A black burglar who breaks into his apartment calls him "some kind of pimp lawyer.") As such, his clients include a man who operates an out-call massage parlor, a woman who has run over her own granddaughter with a power mower,… and whichever other flotsam and jetsam of society float his way….

It is the...