Stalking the Unicorn

It's been a bad year for private eye John Justin Mallory. His wife has run off with his partner the rent on his office is overdue and some Mafia muscle has staked out his office building waiting for him to come out - when suddenly an elf from that Manhattan you can only see out of the corner of your eye the one that vanishes when you turn to look at it head-on offers him a job: find a missing unicorn before dawn. Mallory doesn't really believe in the elf but the alternative is waiting outside the building so he goes to that other Manhattan which is populated by gnomes goblins leprechauns elves and the notorious Grundy the most powerful demon on the East Coast where he has one night to solve the mystery retrieve the unicorn and save his own skin. Mike Resnick's delightful Stalking the Unicorn was an urban fantasy years before there were urban fantasies and it has thus far spawned two more novels six novelettes and a short story covering the fantastic career of John Justin Mallory in that other Manhattan.