Dark Lane

 

The thirteenth and final entry of author P.C. Hatter’s Kaiser Wrench series of detective novellas opens with the first-person tiger narrator on the brink of death, in fact assumed dead back in New York, although a raven doctor, Steve Snyder, saves his life. When he returns to his home state, Kaiser goes to the hospital, with a shooting victim, the caribou Allen Reece, wanting to speak with him, telling him about a hidden mega-fortune that lupine mobsters are after. Thus begins a frantic search for the hidden money, with several twists along the way.

All in all, I found this one of the stronger entries of the Kaiser Wrench series, given its clear mystery in the form of the mentioned fortune, and I didn’t have much trouble this time around keeping track of the species of the various characters, although their names largely don’t fit what kind of animals they are. There’s also the continued issue of the sloppy editing job, given the number of mostly punctuation errors that even a middle schooler could see. Regardless, I’m definitely not hesitant to recommend this story to those who enjoyed its precursors, and especially to members of the furry fandom.