Grandville: Force Majeure

The lively final installment in Talbot’s Grandville series is set in an alternate 19th century in which England is under French rule, steampunk technology proliferates, and, oh yes, everyone is an anthropomorphic animal. Grandville is named after a classical French caricaturist but is perhaps more directly influenced by the French/Spanish Blacksad series. In this volume, hero Archie LeBrock, a police detective with the deduction skills of Sherlock Holmes and the tenacity of a badger (which he is), takes on an international reptile crime organization that puts his family in jeopardy. The convoluted story takes a while to pick up steam, but the action-packed climax resolves mystery after mystery with panache. Half the pleasure of the series is in Talbot’s carefully drawn menagerie of animal characters, from horned toads to baboons to honey badgers, and in beastly gags like a pair of gangster crayfish called the Cray Brothers and, inevitably, a cameo by slimy piscine pulp writer Byron Turbot. It’s a rousing finish to a series that displays Talbot’s fertile imagination at its best. (Nov.)