The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag
by Robert A. Heinlein
This book (or rather, the primary story which shares the title of the volume) takes place in, I'd say, the 1950s (sensible, as it was written in 1959) and involves almost no science fiction elements until the last five pages or so. Since telling you any part of that would pretty much give away the surprise ending, I won't.
A private investigator gets a job from a man asking him to figure out what he does every day. It turns out that every day, about the time he'd get home after a day's work assuming he does work, he finds himself walking into his apartment as though he's been in a daze. He has no memory of what he's been doing, but does have a red goop under his fingernails.
The investigator and his wife (also a private investigator) follow him around for a few days, and finally start getting death threats in their sleep from some folks calling themselves sons of the bird. They start doing funny and annoying magic tricks to them, thus hastening the plot.
The story "-All You Zombies-", also in this volume, is a neat little time travel yarn. The ending is not for the faint of sensibilities, though, so if you're easily offended, I'd skip the last two pages or so. If you're harder of stomach, I thought the ending was very creative.
This volume also contains several other short stories, none of which I found compelling enough to actually read more than a page or two of.
I give the parts of this book I actually read a 5/10 and 6/10, respectively.
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