Tim Davys

Amberville is Davys’s first novel about Mollisan Town and its stuffed animal inhabitants; it is both a noir novel with an unusual cast and an utterly original meditation on good and evil.

Eric Bear thinks he has escaped his violent past, but when crime boss Nicholas Dove threatens Eric’s beloved wife Emma Rabbit, Eric has no choice but to do what he asks: find a way to remove Dove's name from the Death List. Problem is, no one knows if the Death List really exists.  Nevertheless, Eric gathers his old team together - sadistic male prostitute Sam Gazelle, sweet but dangerous Tom-Tom Crow, and wily Snake Marek - and they set off to find the elusive list. What Eric learns will forever change the way he thinks about his life, his family, and his town.

From Kirkus Reviews, January, 2009:

This debut novel from pseudonymous Swedish author Davys, foreign rights to which have sold in more than 20 countries, is a noirish allegory starring a pair of twin teddy bears. It was originally published in Sweden in 2007.

The story is set in Mollisan Town, a metropolis that's ordinary in every respect except for the fact that it's populated entirely by stuffed animals. That makes for an odd social order. Couples wishing for a child submit a request to the Cub List, and their little bundle of fabric and stuffing arrives via a green pickup, while some adults tend to strangely disappear via red pickups. The novel turns on the latter detail. Eric Bear, a former gangster settled down with his wife, Emma Rabbit, is visited by his old boss, Nicholas Dove, who believes he's on the Death List, meaning a red pickup is due to arrive soon. Eric is asked to discover the keeper of the list and expunge Dove's name from it, lest his wife, Emma Rabbit, be destroyed. That setup suggests a spoof of hard-boiled crime fiction, but while Bear's associates seem drawn straight from the heist-film playbook (an immoral gazelle, a devious snake, etc.), Davys is working more existential turf. Eric's twin, Teddy, is the polar opposite of his brother, deeply obsessed with the nature of good and evil, and the novel is interspersed with his musings on the nature of relationships, particularly when it comes to family and religion. Davys ensures that Teddy's ruminations are well integrated to the plot, and as Eric gets ever closer to discovering the true nature of the Death List, the author ponders the big questions of who created us and who keeps order in a complex society. Why a stuffed animal is a useful metaphor for getting at philosophical concerns is never entirely clear—Davys doesn't make much of the inherent stuffed-animal-ness of his characters, which drink, eat, drive and generally live much as humans do. Still, the romantic triangle among Eric, Teddy and Emma is engagingly drawn, and never for a moment does the story feel like kids stuff.

An appealingly unique world, cut from some interesting cloth.

From Booklist (Issue: February 15, 2009)

The detective novel contains multitudes—from Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1991) to Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007)—but it’s still surprising when a writer finds a new twist. In Mollisan Town, Eric Bear is an advertising executive with a shady past. When crime boss Nicholas Dove learns he’s on the Death List, he tells Eric to erase his name, or Eric’s beloved Emma Rabbit will be torn to stuffing. To do the job, Eric reassembles his old gang: Sam Gazelle, Tom-Tom Crow, and Snake Marek. Yes, they’re all stuffed animals, but there’s more to this than the fun of toys behaving badly. While Amberville employs the twisty tropes of classic crime fiction, from doppelgangers to fake identities, its real ambition is metaphysical: Is there really a Death List? Who chooses the names? And why would factories make stuffed animals when they’re destined to be destroyed? The search for answers leads Eric Bear to the highest halls in Mollisan Town’s secular and religious institutions. Ironically, these questions would seem less weighty if not posed by stuffed animals, but we couldn’t help loving this book anyway. The publisher describes it as The Big Sleep meets Animal Farm, and, frankly, we can’t do better than that.
— Keir Graff