Gun, with Occasional Music
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Gumshoe Conrad Metcalf is up to his fedora in trouble. There’s a rabbit cooling its heels in his waiting room, a gun-happy kangaroo breathing down his neck, and the streets of Oakland have gone to the dogs—literally. In this near-future world, evolved animals carry I.D. cards, the cops keep score with your karma points, and half the city’s doped on Forgettol and Acceptol, pills that make sure you don’t ask too many questions.
Metcalf’s latest case looked simple enough: trail Celeste, the knockout wife of a high-society sawbones. Only somewhere between the stakeouts and the sighs, he started to lose his professional distance. And when the good doctor winds up dead, Metcalf is staring down the barrel of the Inquisitor’s Office on one side and a crew of underworld toughs on the other—the kind that run their rackets out of a gin joint called the Fickle Muse.
Part sci-fi satire, part hardboiled whodunit, Gun, with Occasional Music takes the mystery game to strange new alleys. Wry, sharp, and just plain twisted, it’s a future that feels uncomfortably close to the present.