The small town detective and his son Junior are on the scene of over two dozen crimes including stabbings, assaults and robberies. There's even a couple of mysteries involving the CIA and a trio of crimes involving the tragic demise of a 1960s rock band.
Most of the solutions were pretty easy to solve. A couple were quite tricky. And one or two had a solution that I just disagree with. To go into it further would bring about massive (and unforgivable) spoilers. So all I will say is that speculation and not fact are how Dr. Quicksolve arrives at 1 or 2 of his deductions. Sadly, poor detective work is rubbing off on the next generation as one of Junior's mysteries is solved by a 'guestimate' and not proven fact!
Seems a little unfair to me. But I am sure that's what happens in the real world too!
Two sections in this book involves a series of mysteries being grouped together. The first one had a one page set-up that took me a few minutes to figure out. It looked just like the other mysteries with a header and an illustration. But there was no blurb explaining to the reader about what aspect of the crime there was to solve. So when you get to this section of the book, don't do like I did and think that there is a page missing or a printing error. There's not. It's a transition that is just not presented to the reader very well.
While I thought that some aspects of this book had a little too much creative license, I did like how the solutions don't go in order. The solution for mystery #1 might be on page 95 and the solution for mystery #2 might be on page 88. This prevents over-eager sleuths from cheating. This was an innovation that I thought was greatly superior to those mysteries of Encyclopedia Brown. But that's about all that this book does better than the kid detective.
Rating: 6 out of 10 stars.
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