Chimera

The mean streets of Raymond Chandler's L.A. stretch into a dark and dangerous future in Will Shetterly's transgenre novel, the SF mystery Chimera. The concept of intelligent animal-human hybrids is as old as H.G. Wells's The Island of Dr. Moreau, but Shetterly bravely makes explicit the parallels between his chimeras and the pre-Civil War status of African-Americans, and he is rarely heavy-handed. A thought-provoking, hard-boiled page-turner, Chimera should please both science fiction and detective fiction fans. --Cynthia Ward