An unorthodox but diverting whodunit featuring colorful characters.
An orange-skinned man with carrotlike features, his dwarf friend, two university professors, and a movie star become embroiled in a murder mystery in Smalley’s (The Bare Bear, 2015, etc.) graphic novel.
Lanky circus performer Hugo the Carrot Boy doesn’t know his roots, having grown up on a farm with neglectful adoptive parents. But he does have an old photograph of geneticist Carter Millwheel, who’s currently at Lake Shore University in Chicago. Hugo has a plan involving the scientist that could result in substantial cash, so he heads to the college with his pal Balthazar, “the World’s Mightiest Dwarf.” At Lake Shore, professor Alix Fitzsimmons convinces her boyfriend, fellow professor Timothy Legend, to attend an upcoming protest rally that anti-technology activist Julian Potkin is spearheading. Alix was planning to cover the rally for a local newspaper, but she gets sidetracked by the arrival of famous actress Goldie Hart, who’s at the university on a film shoot. Goldie initially asks Alix for directions, but the two women quickly become friends. Meanwhile, Hugo disguises his distinctive carrot features on campus and retrieves research material from Millwheel’s lab; he subsequently blackmails the geneticist with information about a particular experiment. Before long, someone turns up dead, and amateur detectives Alix and Timothy investigate the handful of people who had motive and opportunity to commit murder. Despite some intermittent violence and sexual themes, Smalley’s graphic novel’s tone is one of lighthearted fun. Timothy is often appealingly facetious, and greedy Balthazar has a loyalty to Hugo that’s endearing. Over the course of the story, there are a few surprises involving connections between a few characters, and the murder mystery plotline is consistently engrossing. However, readers may find it bewildering that quick-witted Alix and Timothy must rely so heavily on the latter’s artificial-intelligence project—especially when a second murder points to an obvious suspect whom the two professors don’t seem to consider. Smalley’s bold, black-and-white illustrations are skillfully organized, rendering occasional directional arrows unnecessary.
An unorthodox but diverting whodunit featuring colorful characters.Pub Date: July 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-07-835530-8
Page Count: 103
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Sept. 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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