Fletcher takes being a detective very seriously. He has a badge that he earned from a Private Detective Academy. He’s eager to get started solving real crimes, not just kids’ stuff. But he never suspected just how dangerous real detection can be! When a popular girl hires him to solve a crime where the prime suspect is a member of a prominent crime family, Fletcher jumps at the chance. But it’s not long before he’s in over his head. He’s already suffering some pretty serious injuries, when he finds himself on the wrong side of the law. And he has the most unlikely ally possible: Red Sharkey, his prime suspect, a boy he’d written off as a career criminal. As Fletcher tries to figure out whose behind a series of seemingly unrelated crimes, he learns that looks are often deceiving.
I was a little disappointed, because I was really expecting to love this, but it never really caught me. I liked its message and how it (hopefully) will get kids thinking about making judgments based on appearances, but I was never eager to pick it up again. As far as a mystery goes, there are definitely decent clues to follow and while suspenseful, it’s more action movie type suspense than thriller suspense. It would be appropriate for students in the third grade and up.
Sex, Nudity, Dating – Valentines and lovey-dovey notes are mentioned as is hiring someone to tell another person that you like them. Fletcher says people are looking at him but not in the good “I wonder if he’s single” kind of way. Fletcher’s sister is popular with the boys and has a boyfriend, who she needs to dump almost immediately because he’s seeing someone else. When a boy meets a girl about a job, people joke/tease that it is a date. An old lady spies on people and sees some extramarital affairs, she mentions kissing, but nothing else. One boy suggests to another that he is getting “romantic ideas” about a girl. He’s not.
Profanity – “butt face”, “hell” as a location, “Oh my God,” “God,” “moron,” “shut up,” “shove your second…shove your accusations,”
Death, Violence and Gore – Different types of school fights are described: the self-explanatory headlock; the pinwheel, where opponents run at each other eyes closed and arms spinning; the hold me back, in which people mainly yell hold me back and hope someone intervenes so they won’t have to fight. School fights sometimes include threats like “I would have murdered you.” A girl threatens to beat someone. The principal keeps a record of children and their offenses. Being suspended is depicted by a stick figure being lynched. A toddler hurls a block at another toddler causing bleeding. One boy knocks another to the ground and tells him to back off or he’ll “be sore and sorry.” A boy is hit with something heavy, like a club and loses consciousness. He ends up hospitalized with bone bruising, a broken nose and a badly injured hand. None of this is treated as scary, it’s sort of matter of fact and casual. He describes his face after the attack as looking like “someone had dropped a pound of rare steak on my face, and it had stuck.” There is a fire. A girl hit an admirer in the face with a microphone knocking out four of his teeth. A character’s mother died prior to the start of the book. A boy punched another kid in the stomach. Two boys are attacked by people wielding golf clubs. Two people fall and are badly hurt. A 10 year drives a car into another car, causing the air bag to deploy. A boy punches another boy in the arm. A woman hits a man in the head with a piece of wood. A man threatens a child.
Drugs, Alcohol and Smoking – None.
Frightening or Intense Things – None.
Gross-Out Humor – there is some gross-out humor here. A boy has lots of snot dripping from his nose. One type of school fight means that sometimes people go to the bathroom in their pants.
