Anonymous Rex by Eric Garcia

Disclaimer Thingy: Cross-posted at the Spring Reading Challenge.

As it says on the cover, Anonymous Rex is a detective story. I generally find detective stories to be overly formulaic, and this book, while it wasn't exceptional, also didn't irritate me in the way that many books of the genre do.

Many contemporary writers of detective stories, mysteries, or whatever you want to call them, seem to think that adding some unusual twist to the basic premise is enough to make up for the lack of an original plot. The twist to this particular book was that the protagonist, Vincent Rubio, is a velociraptor. That's right, a velociraptor, like in Jurassic Park. In fact, in this story, approximately 12% of the population are actually dinosaurs masquerading as humans (score one for the "intelligent design" folks, I guess.) Thousands of years ago the surviving dinos on the planet, who had by that time evolved to be smaller in size than their ancestors (score one for Darwin), decided that their best hope for continued survival was to integrate into human society, keeping their existence a secret. The dinos can differentiate between humans and dinos by smell, which solves a whole bunch of potential problems. The dino scenario allowed for a few rather clever details (e. g. alcohol has no effect on dinos, but herbs such as basil and oregano are mind altering substances, providing a whole new take on "fern bars".)

The book begins with Vincent Rubio addicted to basil and wallowing in extreme debt and depression following the mysterious death of his partner in the private investigator business. A suspicious fire at a dino night club leads to an investigation requiring Vincent's currently very affordable rates. Further intrigue ensues. I'll leave it at that.

Author Eric Garcia was only 26 years old when this book was published, and at times his youth was obvious, particularly when referring to cultural events that anyone my age would would know about, but obviously were not understood by the author; in fact, it was clear that he didn't even realize that he didn't understand them, yet wrote about them with the self-assured obliviousness of youth. I should have made notes about them while I was reading the book, but I didn't and my aging brain doesn't seem able to dredge up details I read only a day or two ago, so I have no examples to cite. Oh, well.

I found Anonymous Rex to be a reasonably entertaining read, but nothing to get too excited about. Take out the dino element and it was an okay detective story - not great, but I've read a lot worse by much more famous authors. It is Garcia's first novel, so I may try another of his books some day to see how they progress.


Note: Now that I've written all that stuff, I discover that Casual Rex, the prequel to Anonymous Rex, was made into a pilot by the Sci-Fi channel and released under the name of Anonymous Rex (I don't do television, so this is news to me.) Garcia also wrote Matchstick Men, which Ridley Scott made into a film starring Nicolas Cage, released in 2003. In addition, he is the author of Repossession Mambo, the film version of which is due to be released in 2008 starring Forest Whitaker and Jude Law.

Spring Reading Challenge

Okay, so I've joined the Spring Reading Challenge. It's this thing where you read some books, write about what you've read, read what other people have written about what they've read, write about what other people have written about what they've read about reading the things that they wrote reading write . . . umm, I seem to have gotten a little carried away there. Why don't we start over? You read some stuff and write some stuff and read some stuff written by other people about stuff they've read . . . this could get out of hand in a real hurry.

Well, to me, reading is not a challenge (unless it's non-fiction.) I read constantly. I don't feel comfortable going anywhere without a book, just in case. The challenge is finding good books to read. I find an author I like and I read everything I can find by that author. Then what? Read a bunch of mediocre books until I find another author I like. It's also a challenge for me to write about what I've read. So this whole Spring Reading Challenge thingy will, hopefully, serve two purposes: it should be a resource for some good reading material as well as an opportunity to share what I've enjoyed reading with other readers. And an opportunity to create community while discussing books with other people. Okay, I guess that was three purposes. Sorry.

If this sounds interesting to you, you can sign up until March 7th. Follow the link above or on my blogroll (some blogs I like...). Go crazy.