Gain Access The Short Con Illustrated By Pete Toms File Format Digital Version
Weirdly funny. The reveal at the end was incredibly strange, But awesome.
: I read this again because somehow I forgot I'd already read it This short, punchy, detective story really packs a sassy punch.
And the end really resonates with that sitelinklawyer cat video.
The artwork is so clever, and the writing so witty! I want more! So much more! And an animated tv show spinoff! Please please! Even Better Than the Setup Suggests
O.
K. , the setup is pretty grabby, Mary Branwell, a rich kid newly orphaned as a consequence of her parents' mysterious deaths, shows up at an odd orphanage that is home to a child detective agency.
She's assigned as a new rookie partner to "Pops" Popowski, the orphanage's crack homicide detective, Their first case together Looking into the possible murder of Mary's parents, Now, that was quite enough to get me interested in looking at this book,
What I did not expect was how shrewd, sharp, edgy, selfreferential and drop dead funny the writing would be, Pops is a mouthy crackerjack, and after a slow start Mary holds her own as Pops' partner, Within the first few pages we have funny throwaway references to Jane Eyre, Nietzsche, Sylvia Plath, existential angst, orphanages, and Ellio Ness.
We learn that shifty developers break
down and then move into and redevelop poor neighborhoods by burying vampires in them to scare off the original tenants, a process called "vampification".
Pops is just a stream of consciousness wiseguy machine, but some of what she says and does is priceless,
The focus, of course, is kidding the detective genre, mostly as it is portrayed in CSI type TV shows and the like.
We get the usual secondary characters the head nun tough precinct captain, the nerdy computer researcher/hacker, Pops' vaguely remembered former partners, and so on.
Everyone keeps commenting explicitly on the memes and tropes they're mocking, and all of the characters are aware of the fact that they are involved in some complex parody.
So, the whole story is sort of a funny commentary on itself, which is in any event a funny story,
The drawings feel a bit cartoony at first, but with their scrambled high energy and exaggeration they enhance and support the antic feel of the narrative.
And that was fine by me because this book is really carried not by the illustrations but by the dialogue, crosstalk, throwaways and monologues from Pops.
Everything else was a bonus,
So, this was a hip, sometimes deadpan and sometimes in your face, cheerful, witty romp of a sendup, It is well crafted and briskly paced, and just an overall hoot, A happy find.
Please note that I received a free advance willselfdestructinxdays Adobe Digital copy of this book in exchange for a candid review.
Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book, I really thought this was a lot of fun, A rich orphan girl gets put into an orphanage home below her station and finds the whole thing is run as a detective agency or cop shop.
Mary becomes the partner of "Pops" and a girl who specializes in forensics on the homicide team, I'm not sure the appropriate age range for this as it is a simple entertaining story for kids, but the language is aimed more at the higher educated.
Pops has a habit of calling people names such as Jane Eyre, Gertrude Stein, Howard Hughes and Virginia Woolf to just name a few.
The first time "Pops" speaks to Mary he asks her to have her existential crisis somewhere else, I found this humour hilarious, but think the understanding will come for older children, This is the first in a series and I'd certainly read the next one, Note: I accessed a digital review copy of this book through Edelweiss, A cute concept hardboiled detectiveyear olds that is too concerned with sending up the dialogue and other tropes of the genre to actually follow through on the one necessary component.
Namely, the mystery. The reader is steered along an entertaining path, but nowhere are they given the clues to piece together the solution for themselves.
What we end up with is a fancifully presented dish without much actual substance beyond the initial taste, The setup of "kid detectives living in an orphanage" cannot begin to explain how fun this comic is, Mary Branwell, recently orphaned, is teamed up with Popowski, a hardboiled homicide cop, to investigate the fire which killed Mary's parents, Popowski's dialogue is stellar. There are robot dogs. I wish, oh how I wish this was an ongoing series, But there is only one small volume, which you should buy, read, and cherish, Many clever parts. Made me chuckle. A fun, short, allages graphic novel that seems to skew to an older audience because of some of the references which would most likely fly over the heads of younger readers and at times seem dark and blunt.
Still, a fun take on the hardboiled detective genre, I think it would make a good series and would welcome reading the next installment if there was one, I don't know man. I really liked this book, but feel like it has too many adultlevel jokes to really connect with it's otherwise ageappropriate audience.
Bummer. The book opens with a newly orphaned girl staring out a window and remarking on how much she hates life, We learn that her name is Mary Branwell and that she is being assigned as a partner to another girl "Pop" Popowski.
The nun in charge of the orphanage says that Pops is a weird kid and needs socialization, Oh yeah, and they're kid detectives, Kid detectives that are going to solve the murder of Mary's parents,
This was an odd book, I liked the premise and the illustrations, The ending was just a bit too weird for me, Funny, fast read with tons of references that will go over kids' heads, but be appreciated by adults, .