A bioengineered raccoon private investigator must find a missing mouse in Adrian Tchaikovsky's action-driven, wildly inventive sci-fi noir, Green City Wars.
Skotch lives in a green city, the creation of humans who finally figured out how to live a carbon-neutral, plush life by employing Little Helpers, animals made intelligent with the use of medications that grant them advanced cognitive capacity. Most animals receive regular doses of Plangent in exchange for services. Others must rely on less legitimate sources.
Skotch is running low when Benson, the snapping turtle manager at the Uzco human services corporation, offers him a job: find a mouse called Doctor Meece and bring him in. If the job seems too good to be true, that's because it is. Seemingly everyone is looking for and willing to fight over this mouse, but no one will tell Skotch why. And if Skotch can't find Meece quickly, it's going to cost him more than his intelligence.
Tchaikovsky (Alien Clay) flavors the familiar rhythms of noir dialogue and plotting with bits of different animal and human cultures--a rat gangster boss inquires, "Where's the mouse, Herr Washbear?" The Redcoats and Graycoats are squirrels in a never-ending turf war. The femme fatale is a graceful, deadly stoatweasel--not a romantic prospect for a raccoon, though Skotch can see the appeal for those of the right species. All this cleverness is both a wink to readers and a shorthand for understanding the rather complicated world Tchaikovsky has created.
Sci-fi fans who enjoy classic detective stories or the Redwall series should pick this up. --Suzanne Krohn, librarian