Can-Do Gumshoe: Shark Detective by Jessica Olien

SHARK LIVED ALONE IN A HOTEL ROOM IN THE CITY.

HE LOVED WATCHING DETECTIVE SHOWS.

AT NIGHT HE DREAMED THAT HE WAS A DETECTIVE.

And then lonely Shark spots a poster advertising a reward for finding a lost cat.

HE KNEW WHAT HE HAD TO DO...
HE WOULD BECOME... SHARK DETECTIVE!

In trench coat and deerstalker, with magnifying glass in hand, Shark sets out to investigate. He researches in the library and practices Tai Chi in private. With a copy of the lost kitty poster in hand, he sets out to question potential witnesses in the neighborhood. He has a little problem getting witnesses to open up to him:

"SHARK!

DON'T EAT ME!" THEY SCREAM.

SHARK WAS BEGINNING TO THINK THAT HE WASN'T CUT OUT TO BE A DETECTIVE.

But as the defective would-be detective heads home to his hotel, he gets a break in the case. Down a dark alley he hears a sad "Meow!" It's the missing cat! And when he tells the wandering kitty that he is a detective on his case, the kitty (conveniently named Watson) is overjoyed for help with the mystery of his missing mouse.

"A DETECTIVE! THAT'S WHAT I NEED.

If a shark in a Sherlock deerstalker isn't goofy, I don't know what is. Jessica Olien's just-published Shark Detective! (Balzer and Bray, 2015) has this unlikely gumshoe searching the urban cityscape for a lost kitty cat (with mouse toy) in a classic movie-trope-filled take on finding a missing cat, a sidekick, and career all in Shark's first case. There's a satisfying solution to the story, but the real fun is in cartoonist Olien's choice illustrations of lonely guy Shark scarfing chips and watching endless film noir detective flicks in his fleabag hotel, Investigator Shark attempting to question, um, reluctant witnesses, and Sherlock Shark and Watson hanging out their shingle, sleuths together.

CAT AND SHARK--DETECTIVES

Top Dog? The Legend of Diamond Lil by Doreen Tully

I was missing scents, leaving the chickens vulnerable, and as tired as I had ever been.

Keeping the chickens safe was a job I wasn't going to be able to do on my own.

I needed a partner.

Someone quick. Someone smart. Someone I could trust.

Someone like Lil.

Retired search-and-rescue dog J. J. Tully has a new case, a wily 'possum who keeps penetrating his well-guarded perimeter and making her way to the chicken coop where Moosh and her chickens are roosting every night. Despite his best detecting skills, he finds he is being outsmarted by that mangy marsupial, and his self-esteem is taking a nose dive.

It doesn't help that all the chicks have gone ga-ga over the their neighbor Barb's new dog, Lillian, a glossy white Samoyed who affects a Georgia drawl and a magnolia manner that impresses the entire barnyard. Even J.J. Tully, veteran nose-for-hire, finds himself falling under her Southern spell despite himself.

But despite her shiny, talcum-powder-white coat, J. J. begins to suspect that there is something shady about this shaggy lady. For one thing, she never seems to go inside Barb's house, even pretending to prefer sleeping under the house. And then she seems strangely clueless about Barb's daughter Bobby, away at college since summer, and J.J.'s gumshoe nose smells an impostor when Lil casually refers to Bobby (real name Roberta) as he. J.J. realizes that in order to solve the 'possum caper he's going to have to sniff out who Lil really is.

In her second sequel to the well-review first book, The Trouble with Chickens: A J.J. Tully Mystery (J. J. Tully Mysteries), Doreen Cronin's latest entry has all the giggle potential of its predecessor. J. J. Tully is a worth successor to the notable Hank the Cowdog, just as self-important and yet unsure of his place as the protector of poultry, and in her spoof of the hard-boiled detective genre, the colorful characters Cronin creates--wise-cracking Moosh the hen and her cheeky chicks, Dirt, Sugar, Poppy, and Sweetie, house dog and part-time villain Vince-the-Funnel, presumed perpetrator Ida Rose the 'Possum, and the suspected impostor Diamond Lil--are classy supporting players.  The Legend of Diamond Lil: A J.J. Tully Mystery (J. J. Tully Mysteries) (Balzer & Bray, 2012) is a perfect fit for the early-chapter-book reader who likes a potpourri of elements in their fiction.

As School Library Journal puts it, "“Children who like a little bit of everything mixed into their reading, particularly mystery, adventure, and animals, will enjoy this book.”

Kayo! The Brixton Brothers: It Happened on a Train by Mac Barnett

"I'm a retired detective, okay?"

Dana rubbed his chin. "So what's the plan? I mean, there's nothing we can do, right?"

"Look," said Steve. "There's an innocent person who is almost definitely in some kind of danger right now. What I'm saying is that I've been trying to stay out of the game--"

"The game?"

"Yes, I've been turning down jobs left and right. But I can't let this happen. This girl needs a detective. I'm reopening the Brixton Brothers Detective Agency. Dana, we're back in business."

"WE?"

Steve Brixton thinks he has given up the gumshoe game and retired to taking out the trash, until he boards a train for a social studies convention with his friend (Don't call me chum!) Dana. A fan and imitator of the Bailey Brothers books, Steve is fond of dime-novel detective lingo and feels a case coming on as soon as he boards the train, despite its lack of Orient Express elegance. What about that sealed, windowless car at the end of the train? There's got to be a mystery there somewhere.

And when he meets an intriguing girl on the dining car of the train, his detective DNA begins to assert itself. Claire is not your standard pre-teen queen, but there's a certain attraction there, an air of mystery, and when Steve looks for her to return the book she left behind in the dining car, all his sleuthing skills come to the fore when she is nowhere to be found on the train. Steve is sure she has been kidnapped and can only be being held prisoner in that mysteriously sealed car at the end of the train.

With a very unenthusiastic Dana reluctantly playing gumshoe sidekick, the two seventh-grade sleuths are off and detecting as they find themselves in the middle of a stolen antique car case that soon finds Steve locked inside a broiling sauna, shut inside a car trunk, cuffed, locked, and left in a closet with Claire and Dana, and with his chums, escaping just in time from an exploding warehouse full of antique cars in Mexico.

It's all in a day's sleuthing for the reprised Brixton Brothers Agency as Steve bum-rushes, kayos, and wooden-horse-capers on his way to the closing of the case in Mac Barnett's latest installment, It Happened on a Train (Brixton Brothers) (Simon & Schuster, 2011), soon available in a brand-new paperback edition. A deliciously tongue-in-cheek parody of the venerable Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew teen-sleuth genre, this one offers page-turning adventures and literary satire along with its many laughs. Kirkus kayos their review, saying "Barnett’s sly and often silly Hardy Boy parody chugs along with plenty of laughs and enough honest-to-gosh mystery to please any lover of boy detective fiction. [Adam] Rex’s black-and-white pencil drawings (which also parody the Hardy tales) are still a fine match for the goofiness."

Earlier entries in this series include The Ghostwriter Secret (Brixton Brothers) and The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity (Brixton Brothers), with a brand-new installment, Danger Goes Berserk (Brixton Brothers) published October 12.

Self-Defense: The Accused: Theodore Boone Series (Book 3) by John Grisham

Theo knew it was wrong, maybe not illegal, but certainly wrong.

The line between right and wrong had always been clear; now, though, nothing was clear. The wrongs were piling on top of him. It was wrong for someone to break into his locker and plant stolen loot with the obvious goal of getting him in trouble. It was wrong for someone to stalk him, to slash his tires and throw a rock through his window. Theo had done nothing wrong, yet was now being treated like a criminal. And if Theo were to be charged by the police, another wrong would occur. Was it wrong for Theo to steal a password, all in an effort to prevent another, much larger wrong?

Could doing something wrong lead to the right result?

Theo Boone knows that someone is out to get him. Accustomed to being on the sunny side of the law and order line, Theo Boone, kid lawyer, finds himself accused of a major felony, the forcible entry and burglary of an electronics store. When his school locker appears to have been vandalized and his favorite baseball cap stolen, Theo figures it is just part of a bully's on-going harassment. Running late, he puts off reporting the theft to the school office, and when four stolen netpads are found in his locker, the police seem certain they have the right felon.

Theo deduces that the planted goods are part of the chain of events--three slashed bike tires and a rock thrown through the window of his parents' law office, obviously meant to intimidate him--and he is certain that someone is out to exact revenge upon him and through him on his parents, but who and for what? With everything coming down on him, Theo knows that the only way he is going to escape being the defendant himself in a trial for robbery is to find the real thief first.

Theo turns to his sometime mentor, his disbarred, ne'er-do-well Uncle Ike, who shrewdly deduces that someone in his school is exacting retribution for a nasty divorce case handled by his mother. But to determine which of his classmates is holding that deep a grudge requires that Theo obtain the password to his mom's secured files. Can two wrongs make a right in this case?

As in most of his adult fiction, the protagonist in Book 3 of his Theodore Boone series, Theodore Boone: The Accused (Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer) (Dutton, 2012) doesn't always play it by the book, operating in the gray areas of right and wrong, going for what he sees as the greater good. It's easy to pick holes in the author's somewhat Swiss-cheesy plotline, and it is fair to point out that often Theo behaves and talks more like one of Grisham's thirty-something heroes than a middle school kid, but Grisham is first and foremost a storyteller, and once he's laid down his premise, the reader is off and running in one of his fast-moving page-turner legal thrillers. Likened to such staples of the juvenile mystery genre as Encylopedia Brownand Nancy Drew, Theodore Boone combines the qualities of Leroy and Nancy with a generous dose of Perry Mason and a dash of Grisham's iconic renegade hero Mitch McDeere.

Oh, and as for the resolution of the case against the golf course murderer Pete Duffy, indicted by the work of Theo Boone in the series opener, Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer, readers are going to have to wait for Book 4. Accused wife murderer Pete Duffy disappears without a trace on the night before his trial opens, so we'll have to wait for the next sequel, to give our busy kid lawyer a shot at bringing this perpetrator to justice.

Besting the Beast: The Beast of Blackslope (The Sherlock Files) by Tracy Barrett

"It would be so cool to solve another mystery," Xander said. "Not much chance of that on vacation though. Do you think--"

Ooo--ooo-OOOOOOO! They both froze as the howl drifted down from the forest. It started long and low, rose to a higher pitch, then dropped again before dying out.

"No way that was a siren!" Xena said. "Let's find out what it was!" She leaped up and ran in the direction of the eerie sound. When Xander didn't answer, she glanced over her shoulder.

Xander had disappeared.

Spending a year in England, brother and sister Xander and Xena Holmes are delighted to discover that they were direct descendants of Sherlock Holmes, and when they come into possession of his casebook of unsolved mysteries, they resolve to solve all of them during their stay. When the residents of the scenic village of Blackslope seem disturbed by a series of events, including a mysterious howling at dusk, the kids are hooked when they discover in his notes that Sherlock, too, had come to Blackslope but was unable to locate the Beast blamed for the disappearance of at least one resident.

Keeping their secret Sherlock files to themselves, the young sleuths put their keen powers of observation to work. Clues appear: large, four-toed footprints in the woods, tufts of long, dark hair, and an obviously terror-stricken cook at their bed and breakfast all seem to jibe with Holmes' original observations, and as their parents attend a pre-sale antique exhibition at the local manor, Xena and Xander get to investigate some of the outbuildings shown in diagrams in their great-great-grandfather's notes. Then the two meet up with a film school crew in the midst of shooting a "mockumentary" about the fabled Beast, complete with costumed actors and faux footprints of their own.

Suspects emerge, from the crotchety stablemaster who chases them away from the barn, the grandson of the anxious cook whose "Beast Walk" brings in tourist money for his hoped-for trip to Australia, the enigmatic grandson of the manor owner who seemed determined to forestall the sale of his ancestral home, and the undergraduate film makers anxious to promote interest in their project.

Real and false clues abound, as the young Holmesians work their way through this case in the rational style of their legendary ancestor. As in the first book in this series, The 100-Year-Old Secret (The Sherlock Files), author Tracy Barrett opens her latest, The Beast of Blackslope (The Sherlock Files)(Henry Holt, 2009), with attention-grabbing action and moves swiftly from catchy clues to slightly scary adventures and into a satisfying conclusion by the young Holmesian sleuths. This series, offering inviting English settings and plenty of atmosphere, promises to be a good one to add to the clan of youthful Sherlocks in the mystery and detective story genre.

P.I. Fly: Joey Fly, Private Eye, in Creepy, Crawly Crime by Aaron Reynolds and Neill Numberman

Life in the bug city. It ain't easy. Crime sticks to this city like a one-winged fly on a fifty-cent swatter.

Crime. Invading the lives of innocent bugs just trying to get through the daily grind. Normal everyday bugs just trying to put three feet in front of the others.

No literary archetype has been ripped off more often than that of the hard-boiled detective, his bumbling assistant, and the beautiful dame who comes to his office in need of help.

Aaron Reynolds' and Neil Numberman's comic graphic novel Creepy Crawly Crime (Joey Fly, Private Eye) sticks to every cliche like fly feet to flypaper in this takeoff on the detective film noir.

J. Fly, Private Eye, finds his coffee-fueled reverie shattered by the appearance of Sammy Stingtail, a brash, wise-cracking youngster who talks himself into a job as PI assistant despite the fact that his long stinger makes it nearly impossible to do surveillance and causes chaos behind him wherever he goes.

In typical plot line development, a voluptuous swallowtail breezes in with a problem. Not the sharpest bee in the hive, as Joey puts it, but a fine floozy of a flutterbye, Delilah finally comes out with the reason for her visit--she wants a detective to prove that her friend Gloria the Ladybug has stolen her diamond-studded pencil box. As slowly and methodically as Colombo, J. Fly, Private Eye, sets out to gather evidence, with no help from the inexperienced Sammy, who steps on most of Joey's best lines of interrogation.

The case itself is a bit clunky; there are the usual suspects--the jealous friend and the lying witness, serving mostly to provide opportunities for Reynolds and Numberman to spoof the usual conventions in the hard-boiled genre along the way. Sure, the intended audience won't recognize the sendup of Sam Spade and Spenser, but hey! most of us didn't learn the conventions from the originals anyway, but from Deputy Dog and a hundred other cartoon characters. Still Joey Fly's ruminations in the P.I. style are a lot of fun. Here he is, regretting his impulse to hire Sammy ("This kid is greener than a leaf-bug in a lettuce patch") as he tries to impart the finer points of the detecting business:

You ever have one of those moments when you wonder if having your wings slowly plucked out with tweezers might be less painful than hanging out with your new assistant?

Guess what? I was having one of those moments.

It's a fun first entry in what might, with a bit of plot tweaking, become an engaging series for the elementary and middle school devotee of the graphic story. And Sammy has a little, um, undercover fun for the reader, a list of "secret clues" hidden in the drawings throughout the book:

What are you looking at? The story's over. Well, since you've got so much free time on your hands, see if you can find all these items in the pages of this book. Now hit the road before I send my fly friend here to buzz in your ear and dance all over your lunch. Do you have any idea where his feet have been...?

Another Teen Girl Sleuth--Sherlock's Little Sister: The Enola Holmes Mysteries by Nancy Springer

Nancy Springer, author of the previously reviewed and admirable Rowan Hood series about the adventures of Robin Hood's daughter, has embarked on a new series about a famous fictional character's relative, the Enola Holmes Mysteries. For Springer, a two-time Edgar Award winner, the sister of Sherlock Holmes is a natural subject, a Victorian girl endowed with a drive for intellectual and personal independence who shares her famous brother's powers of observation and reason.

Enola, by her very name, which spelled backward is "alone," is no stranger to her mother's penchant for ciphers and hidden meanings, especially of the botanical sort, but when her mother suddenly disappears on her fourteenth birthday, Enola feels that the birthday gifts left behind for her contain the secret of her mother's whereabouts. Her much-older brothers, Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes, are, however, clueless about the disappearance until an audit of the manor's accounts shows that their mother has been embezzling funds for years, enough to provide herself with considerable "mad money" far from the restraints of Victorian widowhood.

For Enola the brothers have a safe plan for their little-known young sister--into some good stout corsetry with her and off to a reputable boarding school where she can become a proper young lady suitable for a propitious marriage as soon as possible. Enola deciphers enough of her mother's cryptic gifts to locate a goodly sum of money left behind for her and takes it on the lam as soon as she is out of her brothers' sight.

Traveling by bicycle and railway and disguised in widow's weeds, Enola conceals her money and changes of clothing inside the "bust enhancers," "hip regulators," and "dress improvers" built into Victoria female garb. Almost by accident, Enola becomes involved in the search for a kidnapped twelve-year-old marquess, presumably abducted from his estate, and in a string of chases, narrow escapes, and near death experiences at the hands of several Dickensian villains, Enola keeps the action going as she puts together the clues to the identify of the mendacious kidnappers and, incidentally, the way to trace her mother's path to personal freedom. Escaping the Victorian trap to which her brothers' good intentions will lead, Enola disguises herself again and sets herself up in business as the go-between for her alter ego, Leslie T. Ragostin, Scientific Perditorian, finder of lost objects and lost persons.

Enola Holmes' engaging adventures continue in The Case of the Left-Handed Lady and the forthcoming (January 31, 2008) The Case of the Bizarre Bouquets. With an engaging teen girl sleuth in the best tradition of Nancy Drew, et al, a fresh historical setting, and the proper literary lineage, this series looks like more than a bit of all right.