THE ALBUM OF DR. MOREAU by Daryl Gregory – Review

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

The Album of Dr. Moreau by Daryl Gregory
Published by Tor.com on May 18 2021
Genres: Adult, Science fiction
Pages: 176
Format: ARC
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: An inventive retelling with a pop music beat, The Album of Dr. Moreau is a funny, heartwarming surprise.

I once made the mistake of telling an Englishman my story, and he turned it into a novel. 

What do you get when you mash together The Island of Doctor Moreau, a famous boy band made up of animal/human hybrid musicians, an out of control afterparty in a Las Vegas hotel and a murder mystery? You get one of the funniest, wackiest and most clever stories of the year, told as only Daryl Gregory can tell it.

The story opens with the discovery of a dead body. Bobby O, one of the five members of the mega popular boy band WyldBoyZ, wakes up in a hotel room bed in a pool of blood—right next to the band’s manager, Dr. M, who appears to be very dead. Bobby partied pretty hard the night before and doesn’t remember much, but could he possibly have killed Dr. M? He has a motive—the band was about to break up because of Dr. M and the way he treated the unusual band members, and Bobby is now the prime suspect.

Enter Detective Luce Delgado and her partner Mickey Banks, called to the scene of a homicide at the Matador Grand. According to her boss, Luce has a way with celebrities and getting them to talk, which is why she’s been assigned to this high profile case. WyldBoyZ is one of the hottest bands around, and now it looks like their manager, Maurice Bendix, was killed by one of the band members.

But these aren’t your ordinary famous, super cute boys. The members of WyldBoyZ are animal/human hybrids and include Bobby O, the cute one (an ocelot); Devin, the romantic one (a bonobo); Matt, the funny one (a bat); Tusk, the smart one (an elephant); and Tim, the shy one (a pangolin). As Luce and Banks start to interrogate the boys, they discover the seedy underbelly of one of the most famous bands in the world and must untangle a bunch of lies to get to the truth of what happened. What was Dr. M up to? Where is his wife’s stolen laptop, and what is on the missing CD? And most curious of all, what happened on the barge that brought the five boys together? Luce only has twenty-four hours to figure out the mystery before the Feds take over the case, and she’s determined to bring the killer to justice.

The Album of Dr. Moreau has two mysteries going on: the murder of Dr. M, and the backstory of the band members and how they came to be animal/human hybrids. Gregory weaves these two mysteries together, slowly revealing the answers until the reader finally knows the whole story. And while the murder seems to be the main focus at first, I found myself much more interested in the WyldBoyZ origin story and what happened on the barge, which relates back to the H.G. Wells classic.

And speaking of the WyldBoyZ, I loved the idea of this macabre group of characters forming a band and becoming ridiculously famous. Each one has a distinct personality—a distinctly human personality—which is important considering that they’ve been spliced together with animal DNA and aren’t even considered to be human. Gregory explains the science behind how they are able to talk and sing, but it really didn’t matter much to me, I just went with the concept and enjoyed the hell out of it! Each band member has a different strength, for example, Tusk is the musical genius of the group and does all the band’s song arrangements. In his afterward, the author mentions that he took inspiration from his daughter’s childhood obsession with The Backstreet Boys and NSYNC, and I swear I could hear the pop music of my youth playing in the background while I was reading.

I absolutely loved how funny this story is, and a lot of the humor comes from Detective Banks, believe it or not. Banks loves puns and bad jokes, much to Luce’s dismay, and he uses every opportunity possible to slip one into the conversation (there’s one comment about “the elephant in the room” that had me rolling on the floor). I also loved Gregory’s punchy dialog, especially between the band members. They’ve been through a lot together and developed that special kind of banter that seems light and funny to outsiders but actually conceals years of built up emotions.

And although the story has a light, humorous tone overall, there’s actually quite a bit of emotional depth that I wasn’t expecting. Gregory addresses issues like immigration, human rights and the plight of refugees, all things the WyldBoyZ have had to deal with. I really loved the storyline of Kat, the band’s roadie, who is hiding a couple of big gut punching secrets that aren’t revealed until the end. Luce’s nine year old daughter Melanie also has a role in the story. As Bobby O’s biggest fan, a girl who knows every WyldBoyZ song by heart, I loved the way she became involved in her mother’s case, and the moment she actually met her idols took me back to my own pre-teen days of worshiping one boy band in particular.

For such a short story, Gregory masterfully juggles a lot of characters and side plots and makes the whole thing seem effortless. We get a cool twist at the end that harkens back to The Island of Doctor Moreau, and he wraps up on a feel-good emotional note that made me turn back to the beginning to reread that first section. Just the right length, The Album of Dr. Moreau is a ton of laugh-out-loud fun with hard-to-forget characters and a couple of intriguing mysteries that will make readers quickly flip through the pages to see how things turn out.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.