The Boy Detective Fails

This reads like a lost Tim Burton movie directed by Wes Anderson. Flipping through the first chapter I kept waiting for the character that Johnny Depp was going to play in the inevitable screen adaptation. Turns out it did make to the stage for a brief musical run.

It's Encyclopedia Brown all grown up. Apparently your child prodigies don't exactly navigate adulthood well. Billy Argo is 30, recently released from a mental hospital and still not quite over the mystery of why his beloved sister killed herself. He finds vague work selling hair replacement products. Wig and moustache sets with names like The Junior Executive, The Noble Hunter and The Mysterious Stranger. Past nemeses, now doddering old men like Professor Von Golum keeps forgetting that they plan on killing Billy.

Time hasn't been kind to other kid detectives. Billy runs into the Hartly boys, now working the movie theatre, their detecting days long past when it was discovered their father was running a counterfeiting ring. Frank is heavily medicated after a bad accident at the Old Mill and Joe lost his gig as a mall cop when he shot a shoplifter in the leg.

And I'd happily linger in this off kilter world as Billy navigates his own existential crisis. Cryptic letters hug page gutters to be deciphered (check the copyright page) and the books' french flaps hold a decoder ring to solve other puzzles. Chapter 14 gets stolen entirely.

But it's uneven. Horrible crimes flare up unbidden. Entire buildings and people disappear never to be explained, a little boy tortures his primary school classmates - Bobby Cohen will never walk in a straight line again. And I get it, the adult world comes with adult problems but then it swings back to a shy girl who meekly steals anything pink, blossoming love and classic unmaskings. It's too big a swing - beyond Burton's Batman appearing in the midst of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure this is Todd Phillips' Joker rearing his head.