Re: RARA-AVIS: anonymous rex

From: Schooley ( gsp.schoo@skylinc.net)
Date: 20 Mar 2001


Chris Bahn wrote:

> Curious if any of you have read Eric Garcia's "Anonymous Rex" and what you
> thought of it. It's one of those Philip-Dick-meets-Chandler novels that's as
> much sci-fi as it is hardboiled -- the subgenre including "Who Killed Roger
> Rabbit," "Gun, With Occasional Music" and maybe "Anonymous Brooklyn"
> depending on how you look at it -- the twist here being that the detective
> is one of a secret society of dinosaurs that survived extinction and live
> among humans in disguise. Personally, I'm of two minds about the book.
> Garcia's captured Chandler's prose style quite well, I think, but I wonder
> if this kind of high-concept re-imagining has lost its freshness and is
> turning into a "Marlowe with [insert weird postmodern twist here]" set of
> cliches.

I've read half of it. Initially, the "secret society of dinosaurs" idea freshens the overworked genre of hardboiled parodies, but in my opinion the story itself does not sustain interest in what turns out to be a one-joke book. I got bored with endless details about hiding the tail in the disguise, put the book down and never picked it up again. Maybe I'm too old to embrace the inuendo.

I'd be interested to hear what I've missed from those who read on, however.

Kerry

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