The Gumshoe Gorilla

2024 was a rough year for Drew Parker. His car broke down, his rent went up, and his partner was kidnapped by a revenge-crazed performance artist with a grant from the NEA. Worse, one of his clients had been tossed off a sky scraper-after being stripped naked, smeared in human fat, and painted with occult symbols. Drew himself had broken into the headquarters of the Christian Militia on a wild goose chase, and nearly gotten his brain fried trying to get back out. And then there was the assassination attempt on that cross dressing Cherokee Shaman, which Drew might not have stopped if he'd known how much trouble it was going to get him into. And that's not even counting the talking gorilla in the fedora.

So far, 2025 isn't shaping up to be much better.

What had started as a simple case involving identical quintuplet actors cloned from the frozen corpse of a dead movie star was suddenly getting complicated. The pushy stage mom was to be expected, but the secret agents from the Cherokee nation came as a bit of a surprise, as did the lethal martial artist in the clown mask who had broken into his office. Nor had Drew planned on finding himself in the middle of a political death match between competing tele-ministeries. Besides, Drew had a personal score to settle, a little matter involving a privatized version of the KGB, a ring of male prostitutes, and a vampire sex cult.

Oh well, at least his Wiccan partner, Jen, is back to help him out. If he can just get her to cut back on the practical jokes and the dating advice.


Genre: Science Fiction