Minerva Keen's Detective Club

Red herrings and gross-out humor abound in this approachable, Only Murders in the Building-esque whodunit by Patterson (the Middle School series) and Graff (The Phantom Tower), which is centered on the Arcanum, a landmark Chicago apartment building that's "a magnet for people who are different and weird." Visiting Melbourne on business, the mathematician father and philosopher mother of Minerva Keen have left the 12-year-old and her accident-prone 11-year-old brother, Heck, in the care of distracted older cousin Bizzy. When their elderly neighbor Kermit collapses in an apparent poisoning while playing chess with Minerva, she becomes a potential suspect, questioned by Detective Taylor. Interested in helping with the case, Minerva soon employs her "superior brainpower" to do some sleuthing of her own, enlisting the help of both Heck and schoolmate "Silent Santos" Salgado. As poisonings continue in the building, the junior detectives race to find the perpetrator while evading the Arcanum's malevolent building manager. Though the puzzle's solution comes out of left field, wonderfully quirky characters, slapstick buffoonery, and smart pacing propel this rambunctious detective story--and its charismatic narrator--into a dynamic mystery. The Keen family reads as white, Detective Taylor has brown skin; context clues suggest diversity across the secondary cast. Ages 8--12. Agents: (for Patterson) Robert Barnett, Williams and Connelly LLP; (for Graff) Josh Gertzler, Hannigan Gertzler Literary. (May)

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. (Mystery. 9-13) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.