In this quick and breezy read, satirical passages which aim to draw parallels with modern society are sometimes intrusive and fall outside the general narration by Crusher. Much of the time, snarls against capitalism, consumerism and the Establishment encumber, rather than liberate, what is a clever and imaginative work. However, this doesn’t detract from the originality and verisimilitude of the world that O’Neill has produced. Details of landscape and place modelled on New York, as befits the detective genre are precise and vivid.

There are shades of T.S. Eliot each feline or canine character is well realised and imbued with human idiosyncrasies but the author might have gone further. For example, Crusher, a straight-barking kind of bloke, displays few nuances or depth of feeling. In fact, this is what may be lacking in the book: characterisations which stand for human strength and foible, as in the Richard Adams’s classic Watership Down. But, as doggy tales go, The Unscratchables deserves a decent sniff and lick.