Anonymous Rex: A Detective Story

A People Beach Book of the Week “Very funny.” – Dave Barry “Startling and clever…hilarious and chilling.” – T.C. Boyle “All the elements of a cult classic.” – Entertainment Weekly “Great.” – Orlando Sentinel “Fast, funny, and smoothly written.” – Seattle Times “A detective thriller featuring a velociraptor PI and a secret society of dinosaurs disguised as humans?…Awesomely funny….Vincent Rubio has a washed-up Los Angeles detective agency, lousy credit, and a dead partner—on top of an addiction to basil and a hard time keeping his tail tucked away in his latex human suit. A routine arson investigation promises to get him back on his (clawed) feet, until the case sends him to New York, the scene of his partner’s suspicious death by runaway taxi. Witty, fast-paced detective work makes for a good mystery, but the story’s sly, seamlessly conceived dinosaur underworld contains all the elements of a cult classic. Grade: A.” – Entertainment Weekly “Debut novelist Eric Garcia pulls off this parallel dino world to a T (rex). [His] descriptions are delicious…inventive and imaginative. He cleverly avoids what could have been a one-joke book with charm, sly humor and a terrific narrative pace.” – USA Today “What would the world be like if the dinosaurs hadn’t gone extinct? As this very funny book shows, for one thing, L.A. would be even weirder than it is now.” – Dave Barry “First-time novelist Eric Garcia pulls it off, keeping the laughs frequent and the plot intriguing. After a few chapters, it seems downright logical to believe we’re surrounded by a cast out of Jurassic Park . Apart from showing off a splendidly warped imagination, Garcia provides a solid mystery.” – People “Garcia has come up with an imaginative twist to the detective fiction genre.” – Daily Variety “Audacious and imaginative. You might not believe any of this 30 seconds after you close the covers, but while it’s going on you’re going to be dazzled by Garcia’s energy and chutzpah.” – Publishers Weekly “Garcia plays it almost completely straight, respecting all noir traditions, and comes up with lovely touches.” – Chicago Tribune “A ‘noir-asaurus’ of a novel, bellowing for attention, the first and only of its breed in the dinosaur detective genre. Garcia has written something so strange, so bizarre, that he’s to be admired just for the attempt. And he not only pulls it off, he also actually makes you wonder why someone hasn’t thought of it before. Garcia’s tough guy deadpan is perfect for navigating his outrageous lost world, and the easy, familiar tone is probably what makes the premise so simple to swallow. Garcia talks the talk, and more importantly, he smirks in all the right places.” – The Miami Herald “Vincent Rubio, the protagonist of this first-person—er, first-dino narrative is so likeable, the story handled with such deftness, that it actually, incredibly works. Spider Robinson meets Sam Spade. The writing is sardonic and strong in the hard-boiled tradition, and laced with jokes about the history humans think they know: Oliver Cromwell was a Brontosaur, and ‘Capone and Eliot Ness were just two Diplodoci with a grudge to settle.’” – The Richmond Times Dispatch “ Anonymous Rex leaps out of its gumshoe formula fast enough to break the genre barrier. Imagine a hard-boiled detective novel crossed with magical realism. Think film noir with great special effects. Think fabulous read. Well p...

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Taos Books

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