Subtitled A Benji Spriteman Mystery, Atomic Fez Publishing 's new novel The Terror and the Tortoiseshell (Atomic Fez, 287pp, March 2010) from John Travis is the`first of a new series of noir pastiches, set in a world in which animals have learned to talk.
Not only talk, but cats like Benji have taken on human tastes (Benji now prefers salmon to tinned cat food), and though he prefers coffee to whiskey, to drink beverages. Benji now stands close to six feet tall, and has absorbed knowledge (such as what a Wurlitzer is) that no mere pet should logically have.
Private Investigations
Benji awakes just after midnight on Midsummer’s Eve to find that he takes up much more floor space than he’s used to, and to hear the sound of screaming. The screams are coming from people, murdered, tortured by newly-sentient packs of animals intent on revenge for years of abuse at the hands of Homo Sapiens – for while the animal kingdom now has intelligence, it has no more wisdom than humans. Over the next few weeks, uncountable numbers of ‘saps’ (as humans are now called) are tortured in parodies of circuses, even burned alive by packs of vengeful apes. And through it all walks Benji Spriteman, seeking both to find out where his owner has gone, and more importantly, what has happened.
As the city gropes its way back toward some sort of normality, Benji takes on the PI business that his former owner ran, despite finding himself in peril on a number of occasions as the bodies of murdered humans begin to surface in a number of animal poses. Human or animal madman? Before the case is out, Benji will pay a terrible price for learning the truth.
The Terror
Talking animals are among the oldest literary conceits, dating back to Aesop’s Fables in the Sixth Century BC, although Travis invigorates the idea through an effective noir pastiche. More recent precedents are the plot of Kij Johnson’s “The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change," which was a 2007 Nebula Award Finalist.
But unlike that story, in which animals gained the power of speech but humanity survived, in The Terror saps become extinct (it could be argued that the ease with which humanity capitulates is suspiciously easy and the least credible part of the novel) leaving animals to fill the vacuum. Nonetheless, Travis is an accomplished writer and uses a linked series of cases to gradually reveal the novel’s central mystery.
John Travis
John Travis is a comparatively new writer, having made his debut in 2006; since then he has been a staple of the British fantasy small press, and his first collection, Mostly Monochrome appeared in 2009. The Terror and the Tortoiseshell is an effective opening to a promising new series.
Colin Harvey - Author six novels, and editor of four anthologies; professional reviewer since 2003, including six years at Strange Horizons. Member of ...
