The Album of Dr. Moreau

May 1, 2021
Hugo and Campbell award-nominated Gregory continues to explore transhuman existence in this sf police procedural set in Las Vegas. The manager of the WyldBoyZ singing quintet has been found brutally murdered in his penthouse suite. Lead singer Bobby O(celot) was found in bed with the manager's blood on his clawed hand. The band is a group of hybrids--part human and part elephant, ocelot, pangolin, bonobo, or bat--who have taken the world of boy bands by storm. Their secrets come out during the course of investigation by Luce Delgado, whose daughter is a huge fan. Gregory lays out this story in tracks, as on an album, which gives the detective as well as each singer a voice, allowing a convoluted backstory to be succinctly revealed. Delgado's partner is obliged to offer only the best puns any good sidekick would when confronted by the Fountain of Furry Humor. The humanity of these outcasts--whose only chance of not being captives of the Wildlife services (aka the CIA) was to become rich and famous--is never in question. Gregory deliberately and imaginatively breaks every one of T. S. Eliot's "Rules of Detective Fiction," with which he has prefaced this luminous novella.

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