After years' absence, persecution by all the predictable authorities, several instances of thoroughly unelective plastic surgery, and a set of geographical switchbacks that would leave you physically allergic to the sight of a straight line, DEATH IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER triumphantly returns with Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice, the "counterculture" as a recco map to its own streamlined reconquest, and the same old evil agencies just biding their time, returning on a scale even they wouldn't have dared dream of when they had to take their last little planned pause.