MINERVA KEEN’S DETECTIVE CLUB

A tween detective’s first case offers plenty of thrills.

Minerva doesn’t start out to be a detective, but when other residents of her Chicago apartment building take to dying or falling unconscious in her presence, she briskly repurposes her school debate club and hurtles into an investigation with her seriously accident-prone 11-year-old brother, Heck; smart, highly anxious classmate Santos Salgado; and savvy, tolerant police detective Wesley Taylor struggling along in her wake. Patterson and Graff deliver a typically fast-paced, twisty caper made up of short chapters laced with frights, flights, misadventures, and, just for laffs, enough burping and farting to put a stockyard to shame. Readers hoping to solve the mystery ahead of the sleuths won’t get much help from the few unhelpful clues and unlikely suspects that emerge; it’s really Minerva’s talents for being in the right place at the right time and asking the right questions that lead to a break in the case. Still, not only do the fledgling club’s efforts uncover some felonious behavior by one of the building’s nastier residents, they lead to a deliciously lurid climax guaranteed to give anyone with a phobia for bugs and other creepy-crawlies nightmares. Minerva reads White; Det. Taylor has dark brown skin, and names and spot art cue further diversity in the rest of the supporting cast.

A flying start for a smart sleuth who’s not averse to heading into harm’s way.