GIDEON GREEN IN BLACK AND WHITE

A 16-year-old detective discovers that noir films are at best iffy guides to both real-life crime investigations and personal relationships.

Pulled away from his bedroom and massive library of old movies by Lily Krupitsky-Sharma, a childhood friend–turned–ex-friend since middle school, who asks for help with a story she’s secretly writing for the school newspaper, Gideon finds himself both intrigued by oddities in their SoCal town’s crime statistics and dazzled by the paper’s smart, charismatic, bisexual editor-in-chief, Tess Espinoza. Deftly twirling noir and rom-com tropes together, Henry chucks in, on the one hand, a corpse, all sorts of conveniently placed evidence of police corruption, and even a comprehensive overheard confession, and on the other, a meet-cute in a bustling newsroom that leads Gideon and Tess into a heady and hilarious high school romance that is likewise chock full of revelations and confessions. Gifted with Sherlock-ian powers of observation, Gideon is so full of himself that he actually wears a trench coat and a fedora. Still, by the end he has not only learned how to rein in his impulse to blurt out infuriating personal comments, but has found ways to mend his relations with Lily and with his single dad, too. Gideon’s father is Mexican and White, and brown-skinned Lily has two moms; names cue some ethnic diversity in the supporting cast.

A tongue-in-cheek charmer: Sit back and enjoy the show.