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Mystery fiction’s a pretty murky genre. For less hardcore fans, a great majority of it is pretty cookie-cutter stuff (i.e. clichéd and tired) and hardly worth reading. Eric Garcia’s books, though, can’t well be pigeonholed or predicted easily, as they detail the cases of Vincent Rubio, PI, a longtime L.A. resident who also happens to be a Velociraptor.

In Anonymous Rex and its prequel Casual Rex, Vincent and a whole slew of other modern dinos hide in plain sight among human society by wearing elaborate disguises. The cleverness of this device is not wasted on the rest of the story, as Garcia has worked details upon details of this alternate society, down to their famous predecessors and favorite controlled substances.

Unwilling to be pigeonholed himself, Garcia’s also written some human-only fiction, namely Matchstick Men, made into a film (late summer 2003) by Ridley Scott.

Find this all at ericgarcia.com: He maintains and publishes it himself, and even responds personally to messageboard posts. What a great guy.