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Published Jul 2009
272 pages
Genre: Mysteries
Publication Information
Paperback Original
Crusher McNash is the police force's most fearless detective, a barrel-chested bull terrier with a biscuit-thin temper and a barbed-wire tongue.
Cassius Lap is the finest agent in the Feline Bureau of Investigation, an imperturbable Siamese with a mind as sharp as a can opener.
San Bernardo is their territory, a seething metropolis where fat-cats prance in the exclusive island enclave of Kathattan while working dogs wallow in the stinking squalor of the Kennels.
When a couple of Rottweiler gangsters are brutally murdered, Crusher McNash tries to convince himself that it's nothing unusual -- just another underworld territorial dispute. But after the sniffer squad identifies a feral-cat killer, McNash is forced to do the unthinkable -- team up with a prissy Siamese from the FBI. The trail leads from junkyards to gambling dens, from cat prisons to baronial estates, in the process unraveling an awesome conspiracy involving domination techniques, population control, and the megalomaniacal ambitions of fox media magnate Phineas Reynard.
Both a hard-bitten crime story and a sharp-fanged satire, The Unscratchables is the genre-bending mystery of the year.
"Starred Review. Kane offers plenty of tongue-in-muzzle insights into bestial behavior, political chicanery and assorted foxy topics." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. [A]ll the details are neatly parceled out along with the compelling and fast-paced plot." - Booklist
"Not the tightest mystery you've ever read, but unquestionably a tour de force." - Kirkus Reviews
This information about The Unscratchables was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Cornelius Kane is a pseudonym of Anthony O'Neill. O'Neill is the son of an Irish policeman and an Australian stenographer. He lives in Australia, and is a full-time writer. Under his own name he is the author of Scheherazade (2001), The Lamplighter (2003) and The Empire of Eternity (2006).
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