Reading Journal Entry: Anonymous Rex, by Eric Garcia

Greek Week was a bit of a pull for me, and I think it might have been showing by the end of the week and my two-line review of Antigone.

I needed an upper after all the suicide and murder stuff, so I was glad to see that Anonymous Rex had turned up at the top of my pile. I've turned it over in my hands a number of times since its publication - those clever covers with the dinosaur tail dragging across the are so eye-catching. And once you read the premise it's hard to forget.

Anonymous Rex is about a hard-boiled private investigator from Los Angeles investigating the death of his partner. Both are dinosaurs.

Yes, dinosaurs still walk the earth. Carefully hidden beneath latex disguises, they are investment bankers, cable repairmen, traffic cops, politicians, and private investigators. A dozen and a half or so dinosaur species including velociraptors, tyrannosuars, triceratops, and other favorites from your childhood coloring books constitute the dinosaur community, which has it's own rules, secret government, and judicial system.

It was while investigating a dinosaur murder that Vincent Rubio's partner was killed by a taxi in New York City six months earlier. Vincent went off the deep end and burned a lot of bridges. Now he's ready to sober up and is getting tantalizing hints from a contact that the mystery might be beginning to unravel.

And whew! What a mystery. Let's just say that when you've got velociraptors who can disguise themselves as sexy humans (of either gender) at will, things get heated.

The set-up strains credulity a tad (I mean, really, where were they hiding all this time) but once that balloon is set aloft it's a well-crafted scenario. Garcia attends to little details about the dinosaurs' disguises and habits that gives this a very realistic feel. Very, very enjoyable.