John Travis’ first novel, The Terror and the Tortoiseshell, is a noir-styled murder mystery with deft touches of both the Comedy and Science Fiction genres, but primary in it is the honouring of the classic hard-boiled detective novels of the 1940s. Benji Spriteman takes over the “Spriteman Detective Agency” after the world is changed overnight by ‘The Terror’, resulting in the animal kingdom moving from four legs to two and banishing the now crazy human population from existence to become the dominant species. Oh, and Benji Spriteman is a sentient, six-foot tall, suit-wearing, Tortoiseshell cat. Yeah, that’s a bit of a jolt, especially to Benji. In this strange environment, which sees animals taking on some of the characteristics of the humans they were closest to, human beings have become a bit like flying saucers — despite occasional sightings, there is never any definite proof that they still exist. But when humans do start to appear it’s always in the most bizarre situations — always dead, and ‘displayed’ as if they were animals. And it’s just as Benji’s life is starting to become a bit more ‘normal’ that he gets drawn into the investigation into these murders, and soon finds himself involved in ways he could never have imagined…