The Unscratchables

Book excerpt: Animal Farm meets The Simpsons in this inventive twist on the hard-boiled detective novel, featuring a world made up exclusively of cats, dogs, and one ruthless fox... Bull terrier Crusher McNash is a no-nonsense homicide detective who eats out of the can and only bathes when his boss orders him to. He’s just been thrownaboneaboutagruesome case involving Rottweilers torn apart by a savage killer, and the only lead he’s been able to sniff out is “an impression of movement” at the murder scene. Crusher suspects the killer is a cat, and there’s nothing he hates more than “the whole cream-lapping, wool-juggling, pajama-wearing, fence-sitting, bird-torturing, furball-coughing lot of them.” But he’ll have to start barking up a different tree if he wants help solving this case as his partner on this case is soymilk-drinking, pressed-suit- wearing Cassius Lap, an agent for the FBI (Feline Bureau of Investigation). As this odd couple puts their paws together, their investiga- tion takes them from the bow- els of the Kennel into the tony streets of Kathattan. Soon, they begin to uncover a vast con- spiracy involving a cat who has been trained as a super-killer, capable of growing in size and ferocity and killing any dog who gets in his way—and who may be working for a media baron fox. But they’ll need to unravel the conspiracy, and quickly, if they want to stop the next killing before it’s too late. Witty and irresistibly entertaining, this genre- bending mystery boldly mixes human and animal sensibilities in an entertaining satire of our cur- rent society.