Stalking the Unicorn: A John Justin Mallory Mystery - Softcover

Resnick, Mike

3.58

1,140 ratings by Goodreads

9781591026488: Stalking the Unicorn: A John Justin Mallory Mystery

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1591026482 ISBN 13: 9781591026488

Publisher: Pyr, 2008

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It's 8:35 pm on New Year's Eve, and Private Detective John Justin Mallory is hiding out in his Manhattan office to avoid his landlord's persistent inquiries about the unpaid rent. As he cheerlessly reflects on the passing of a lousy year, which saw his business partner run off with his wife, he assumes the bourbon is responsible for the appearance of a belligerent elf. This elf informs him that he needs the detective’s help in searching for a unicorn that was stolen from his charge.

When Mallory realizes the little green fellow is not going to disappear with the passing of his inebriation, he listens to the elf's impassioned plea that the stolen magical beast must be returned to his care by daylight or his little green life will be forfeited by the elves’ guild.

Join detective Mallory on a New Year's night of wild adventure in a fantasy Manhattan of leprechauns, gnomes, and Harpies as he matches wits with the all-powerful demon "The Grundy" in a race to find the missing unicorn before time runs out!

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About the Author:

Mike Resnick (Cincinnati, OH) is the author of Dog in the Manger, the first Eli Paxton mystery. The all-time leading award winner, living or dead, for short science fiction, he has won five Hugos (from a record thirty-six nominations), plus other major awards in the United States, France, Spain, Croatia, Poland, and Japan. He is the author of sixty-eight novels, more than two hundred fifty stories, and two screenplays, and he has edited forty anthologies. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages.

From Booklist:

Originally published in 1987, this novel introduced John Justin Mallory, the world-weary New York City private investigator who wound up working cases in the “hidden” New York, the one that exists alongside the familiar NYC but behind the scenes. The story begins on New Year’s Eve. Mallory’s wife has run off with his partner; he’s broke and facing the prospect of being evicted. Then a client walks through his door, a most unexpected client: an elf, Murgensturm, who claims that someone has kidnapped a unicorn he was looking after, and if the unicorn isn’t found by daybreak, the Elves’ Guild will kill him. Naturally, Mallory thinks he’s hallucinating—he’s been drowning his sorrows in place of celebrating the new year—but, when the elf reveals the hidden Manhattan and its strange creatures (cat people, leprechauns, talking horses, and plenty more), Mallory jumps into the case with both feet. Unfortunately, he is new to alternate reality and doesn’t fully appreciate the dangers in it—dangers like the Grundy, a powerful demon who’s responsible for most of the evil in this New York and, it seems, in the “real” NY, too. Genre-bending is commonplace today, but back in the mid–1980s, it was out of the ordinary to impose a traditional fantasy story on the very real, very gritty landscape of the contemporary private-eye novel. A harbinger of what was to come, the book immediately caught on with readers, and it’s easy to see why. It’s clever, funny, and exciting, with a likable hero, plenty of offbeat supporting characters, and that beguiling blend of fantasy and mystery. --David Pitt

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