"I'm the Chimpman. But you can call me Zee." Zee is a private eye in 1950s Hollywood. A place where the rich and successful live cheek by jowl with the poor, the broken, and the rest. A place that epitomizes the American Dream, but also a place where criminals thrive in dark alleys and Beverly Hills mansions. A place where a mobster can be gunned down in his ritzy front parlour. A place where a fourteen year old girl can be an addict and a whore. But Zee is not a typical private eye. He has a past. A past so incredible that most people are blind to it, no matter that it marks every part of him. He is unnaturally strong and hairy, his bones are all but unbreakable, and he is plagued by his alter-ego - a creature he calls the animal. In a series of nine stories we follow Zee through his current cases and his past, from his escape to America as a child, to his years in an orphanage and Joiliet State Penitentiary, to Hollywood, and his early days as a detective, culminating in Zee's discovery of his origins, and a deadly battle with a man who is determined to learn Zee's secrets even if it means dissecting him to get them.