Author: Adrian Tchaikovsky

Philip Marlowe meets Redwall in this superior adult noir tale, where all the characters are animals, fighting for survival in the city underneath the humans.

In the solar cities of the future, the humans relax in the sun and the animals work in the shadows. Genetically engineered Little Helpers, serving humanity–unseen, unheard.

Meet Skotch. Raccoon, PI–yours for a few buttons as long as the job isn’t too illegal, whatever that means.

A mouse has gone missing. Normally this wouldn’t raise any hackles, nor any alarms, but this mouse has something that everyone seems to want, though nobody appears particularly eager to say what that something is.

The fee is good–perhaps too good. Certainly not something Skotch can easily turn down.

If only Skotch can work out where the mouse is hiding, what he’s hiding, and why his secrets are upsetting a lot of animals caught up in the Green City wars.

Publisher: Macmillan Publishers (MPS)
Published: 06/23/2026
Pages: 368
Binding Type: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781250290335

About the Author
Adrian Tchaikovsky is a British science-fiction and fantasy writer known for a wide variety of work, including the Children of Time, Final Architecture, Dogs of War, Elder Race, Tyrant Philosophers, and Shadows of the Apt series, as well as standalone books such as The Doors of Eden, Spiderlight, and many others. Children of Time won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and its sequel, Children of Ruin, won the British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novel. His other works have won British Fantasy, British Science Fiction and Sidewise Awards, and he is a frequent nominee in several Hugo Award categories.