This is the only hard-boiled noir book in the world set in a war torn city under occupation by mysterious mushroom people who live beneath the earth. The premise sounds kind of goofy, but the book plays it totally straight and it works perfectly. And it is a gritty brutal exciting detective book. All the usual noir tropes are in exhibition, but the setting gives them all a nice twist: his partner is literally being eaten alive from the inside, the memories of the dead can be extracted into bulbs and eaten.

This is the third book set in Vandermeer's fictional city of Ambergris and I love how each has a totally different style. You could probably read this without reading the other books, but I'd recommend at least reading the earlier parts of City of Saints and Madmen. He's good about filling in most of the background information, but the mysteries being revealed likely have a lot more impact if you've read the other books.