As you may recall, I like to read kids' books, and when I heard about this over at Detectives Beyond Borders, I thought it sounded like fun.The title character and narrator is 12-year-old Fletcher Moon, known to the other kids as "Half-Moon" because he's small. He has an official p.i. license that he earned in an on-line course, and he's into solving whatever mysteries come his way in the course of his schooling. He's pretty good at it.
The case in this book involves a number of mysterious happenings, petty crimes that don't seem to be connected, though Half-Moon senses that they are. And, sure enough, he's right.
He's assisted in his investigation by Red Sharkey, the white-sheep member of a criminal family, and before long they're being pursued by both the cops and the honest citizens. Half-Moon absorbs more punishment in the course of this novel than most adult private-eyes twice his size, but he's not deterred. In the end, he finds the answers, though he feels diminished by them because of what he has to do to bring the guilty party to light. He's a sadder but a wiser man, er, kid.
This is a breezy, fast book that I'm sure its intended pre-teen audience will like a lot. I liked it, too, but you have to remember I also liked Beowulf in 3-D.
6 comments:
There are kid's books that stay with you a lifetime and I'm talking about ones I first read as an adult. I remember reading Tom's Midnight Garden to two yawning six year olds and finishing it on my own.
I agree, Patti, and I need to do an update post on that very topic. Thanks for the reminder. (I'll probably forget again, though.)
Have you read "Fly By Night" by Frances Hardinge? Terrific first YA novel set in a semi-Regency period world.
Sounds like something I need to have a look at.
I suppose Half Moon Investigations reminded me that a writer is a writer, no matter what age group he writes for. I found it after reading and enjoying Eoin Colfer's "adult" story in the Dublin Noir collection and finding, much to my surprise, that all Colfer's other writing was for kids. (Though now it transpires he is working on an "adult" novel.)
I wonder how many kids will read the opening paragraph of Half Moon Investigations, then remember it fondly years later when they read some of the crime fiction to which it pays amused and amusing tribute.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
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