The Rabbit Factory

The Rabbit Factory

The hilarious and suspenseful introduction of Detectives Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs. Welcome to Familyland, an offshoot of Lamaar Studios. Once a small, Southern California animation house, it has grown into an entertainment conglomerate encompassing movies, television, music, video games, and a sprawling theme park. When an actor portraying Familyland’s beloved mascot, Rambunctious Rabbit, is brutally murdered on park grounds, Lamaar executives are worried that the idyllic image of ‘50s America represented in Familyland will be shattered. They ask Mike Lomax and his partner Terry Biggs, the LAPD detectives assigned to solve the case, to keep the circumstances surrounding the death of their mascot quiet. When a second Lamaar employee is killed, Lomax and Biggs uncover a conspiracy to destroy Familyland and settle an unknown vendetta. Still under pressure to keep the case away from the public eye, the detectives are met with a third murder – and an outrageous demand: Anyone who associates with Lamaar – employees, customers, anyone – will be killed. Bringing a fresh duo of cops to the thriller set, The Rabbit Factory is both suspenseful and satiric, a taut mystery wrapped in sharp, comedic prose. About 30 pages into The Rabbit Factory you will find yourself hoping that the book's author Marshall Karp is at home typing. He has created two LAPD cops, Mike Lomax and his partner Terry Biggs, who are smart, drop-dead funny (especially Terry), and as irreverent as two guys can be. Karp has also written a ripping good story, not counting on buddy-cop banter to carry the day. Mike Lomax's wife, Joanie, died of cancer six months before the action begins, after a long time trying to have a family. Instead of leaving little replicas of herself, she leaves letters, which Mike opens on the 18th of every month, the anniversary of her death. His father, Big Jim, loved Joanie very much but wants to see Mike get on with his life. These guys love each other a lot and the dialogue that Karp gives them is both sharp and tender. Terry Biggs met his wife, Marilyn, who was the paramedic called when he was an "Officer Down." That meeting is so funny you have to read it to believe it. One thing, as they say, led to another, and despite the fact that Marilyn had seven-year-old twin daughters, and a third, age five, Terry signed on for the whole package. And that's how a guy from the Bronx winds up living in Sherman Oaks with a wife and three teenage Valley girls. The setting of much of the action is "Familyland," a Disneyland clone, conceived of by the late Dean Lamaar, who, like Disney, started out as an animator. His creations, Rambunctious Rabbit, Slaphappy Puppy, McGreedy the Moose, and others are now big family favorites and the little cartoon studio is a global conglomerate. It has been recently sold to the Japanese, after faltering receipts, and there are plans afoot to open a theme park in Las Vegas. That opening is just months away when an employee playing Rambunctious Rabbit is murdered on the premises. Not good for the corporate image. Another murder takes place, and another, and it quickly becomes obvious that someone has it in for Lamaar's enterprises. Mike and Terry are under tremendous pressure from Ike Rose, CEO of Lamaar, to keep the whole mess under wraps, and an equal amount of pressure from their Chief to "get it solved." They work smart and long and hard to uncover a conspiracy, finding a big surprise at the end of the search. Marshall Karp is a refreshing addition to the suspense, satire, mystery genre. His two Detectives are irresistible. --Valerie Ryan *Starred Review* In the early pages of Karp's irrepressible and often poignant debut novel, L.A. homicide cop Mike Lomax and his partner, Terry Biggs, are investigating the violent death of the actor portraying Rambunctious Rabbit, the beloved furry mascot at a popular Southern California theme park, Familyland ("Fella was wearing two rabbit's feet, and he still got iced," quips a sheriff at the scene of the crime). The park's parent company, Lamaar Studios, has its finger in a lot of pies--movies, music, television, video games--and the last thing the top brass needs is word of the murder to get out. Lamaar's bubbly, voluptuous PR director, Amy Cheever, is called in to run interference, and detectives Lomax and Biggs are determined to deter her, if only they can avert their eyes from her 38Ds. Soon there's another murder--a Lamaar Studios leading man--and it's clear the killer (a mobster, perhaps, or a vengeful employee?) is hell-bent on bringing the entertainment conglomerate to its knees. Seasoned screenwriter and playwright Karp launches this first in a series with a crisp cast of characters headed by a captivating detective team: Lomax is a handsome, fortysomething widower with a hyperactive conscience; Biggs is a funny, Bronx-born family man with a voice like vintage port. Like the best of Donald Westlake and Carl Hiaasen, The Rabbit Fact