** spoiler alert ** 
 WARNING: Some Spoilers 
 Jonathan Lethem's protagonist in 'Motherless Brooklyn', Lionel Essrog, is the post-modern Nemesis of Sam Spade or Phillip Marlowe, a character infused with all the absurdity, sensitivity, and sad loyalty that Hammett and Chandler could never inflict on their iconic 'Private Investigators'. They were men who moved through the city with a measured, unhurried stride, dragging their shadows behind them across the hot asphalt, heavy black silhouettes weighed down by big ugly secrets, accumulating guilt. 
 Unlike the stealthy, decisive moves and slick, manipulative language of the classic hard-boiled Noir PI, Lionel has Tourette's Syndrome, which is probably the worst handicap a PI could possess. His condition leaves him unable to refrain from making strange yelps and barks, usually at the worst possible moment, making stealth an impossibility, and 'blowing his cover' on stakeouts and stalking 'persons of interest'. While Sam Spade made an art of with-holding information and telling beautifully crafted lies, Lionel Essrog's obsessive-compulsive tendencies make it a near-certainty that any 'classified' information he acquires becomes a gaudy, Las Vegas-grade neon sign posted inside his skull. The fact that it's secret makes it a near-certainty it he'll blurt it out, at the wrong time, to the wrong person. 
 And unlike the classic Noir PI, a lone wolf individualist with his own modus operandi and an existentialist's moral relativism, Lionel is just one of four 'Minna Men'. Their detective work is given to them -- with a bare minimum of explanation -- by their boss and surrogate father/big brother, Frank Minna, a Mob affiliated hood who runs his small piece of Brooklyn like a King. 
 Lionel and the other Minna-Men -- Gilbert, Danny, and Tony -- were all orphans, troubled teenagers trying to survive as rootless, impoverished residents in a tough neighborhood. When another youth named Frank Minna offered them work of a less-than-legal kind, his gestures of friendship, confidence, charisma, and effortless cool, immediately made them loyal followers. He became their role model, their teacher, and their boss, and they all envied and loved him in differing proportions. 
 Lethem begins the novel with the events leading to Minna's death.