OLYMPUS CONFIDENTIAL

Olympian shamus Plato Jones faces his toughest assignment yet: breaking out of prison.

Puckish Plato, who narrates in an arch first-person, begins his descent into trouble when he witnesses the robbery of the Bank of New Olympia by Felix King and his gang. Though Felix and two accomplices are arrested, his dad, Louis, escapes with the loot via a jet pack and a force field. The next day, Zeus hatches a devilish plan over the complaints of his son Hermes, who wants to handle it himself. Plato will be arrested and sent to prison, where he'll befriend Felix and learn all he can about his gang. Getting in involves a public arrest, a trial and a sentence of life without parole. Plato befriends Felix with few obstacles. But the Tartarus Maximum Security Penitentiary is the most dangerous place in the universe, and once Felix and Plato become besties, the sleuth turns his attention to escape. There's a shower-room brawl, led by the surly Reave and broken up by guards, and a confrontation with a snarling pack of Cerberuses, which leads them to bombastic Cronus, king of the Titans and father of Zeus. Achilles buttonholes the duo and convinces Felix to show him some magic. Cronus' return creates enough confusion for the escape midway through this twisty adventure, which includes a run-in with Daedalus,  two-fisted new companion Helena, and a suitably miraculous finale.

In his second caper (Murder on Olympus, 2013) Plato plays Bob Hope to Felix's Bing Crosby, keeping the plot rattling blissfully along with cartoonish action and wisecracks aplenty.