Animal Wrongs

Animal Wrongs by Stephen Spotte is not necessarily for those who enjoy light reading material. The plot consists of three increasingly absurd trials based on historical records from medieval France that are told from the perspectives of the two lawyers pitted against each other for the duration of the novel. Monsieur Chassenee acts on behalf of the defense, which includes rats accused of thievery, a pig accused of murder, and a supposed werewolf, while Monsieur Revigny (a literal demon from Hell) functions on behalf of the prosecution.

Dry, ironic, and filled with witty satire, the author has created a kind of mash-up between a Good Omens-style buddy comedy and a classic Monty Python’s Flying Circus skit. While I enjoyed the banter between the main characters and the relevant applications of the questions of morality and punishment to the modern world, the book simply felt a little too drawn out to effectively keep my attention. None of the cases presented in the story are about flogging dead horses, but the meandering philosophical arguments woven throughout the book could possibly serve as a stand-in metaphor for doing so.