Animal Rites by Michael Panno

Frank Noble is a Viet Nam vet and a retired Secret Service agent, living in a stone cabin in the Angeles National Forest, above Los Angeles. A family of bears live close by and Frank takes joy in observing and interacting with them. This all changes when two poachers kill two of the bears and cut out their bladders and remove their paws to sell on the black market. Little did the poachers know, they picked the wrong bears. Frank enlists the help of Marcell, a dwarf and former Circus Performer with his own dark past, who now lives in a cabin close to Frank, and the two of them set out for revenge. It is a journey that leads them into the seedy underworld of Animal parts, child pornography and prostitution.