BOOK REVIEWS

ANONYMOUS REX: NOT YOUR ORDINARY NOIR 

Anonymous Rex, by Eric Garcia, is a classic noir mystery, with all the required elements: it begins with Vincent Rubbio, a Los Angeles private eye down on his luck, mourning the death of his partner as his practice goes to hell in a handbasket. Convinced that his partner's death was no accident, but was connected to something he'd been investigating in New York city, Vincent has already alienated all the powers that be in the N.Y. and L.A. establishments. He's hitting the sauce, but manages to squeak out one job from a company that formerly gave plenty to his firm. The job is to investigate a suspicious fire in a nightclub, the Evolution Club. Vincent begins the investigation and then finds that the case of the dead nightclub proprietor in Los Angeles leads him back to the very case his partner was investigating at the time of his death in New York City. Vincent has been warned not to get involved in that case again, but, being the honorable and stubborn guy he is, he feels obliged to follow up on the clues. He finds an attractive nightclub singer who may not be all that she claims to be, a number of thugs determined to do anything to stop him from finding out the truth, and a vast conspiracy that will rock the world as he knows it.

Now here's the twist: Vincent Rubbio is a velociraptor, "guised" as a human, living in a society in which there are millions of other dinosaurs living among people who never suspect that the dinosaurs aren't extinct at all.

This may sound like a gimmick (though an imaginative and even audacious one), but it works amazingly well. The case that Vincent is investigating involves the mysterious death of a famous dinosaur philanthropist, which is somehow connected to some interesting documents found in the safe at the Evolution Club (owned, naturally enough, by a dinosaur and catering to a largely saurian crowd). In addition to the usual revelations about characters' backgrounds (is she good or bad? Who is this character really working for?), Anonymous Rex plays with the species of the characters, and whether certain characters are dinosaurs pretending to be human or actually human becomes critical to the resolution of the plot.

The mystery itself is intriguing, full of plot twists and turns, some hinted at, some wholly unexpected. Just when you think you've got a handle on what's going on, Garcia throws another surprise at you, and yet somehow all the plot threads get tied together in the end in a most satisfying way. 

The real fun of the book, though, is Vincent's voice. Of course it's first person narration, and Vincent, whether he's getting bombed out of his mind on basil (dinosaurs can drink alcohol without effect, but oh, those herbs!), making tart observations on his fellow dinosaurs and their politics, or explaining what dinosaurs think about movies like Jurassic Park, is always entertaining. If, like me, you enjoyed the early Spencer novels by Robert Parker but got tired of Parker's love affair with his hero in the later books, Anonymous Rex will remind you of the fun of a wisecracking tough guy private eye who does what has to be done, no matter how much trouble it gets him.

It's a wonderful read, and the more you know about the genre, or dinosaurs, the more fun you'll have with it. A must have.