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The Adventures of Jack Lime

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The Adventures of Jack Lime

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Overview

A filmnoir novel featuring a hardboiled, narcoleptic teenage PI who solves mysteries for his fellow high schoolers.

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ISBN-13:	9781771380676
Publisher:	Kids Can Press
Publication date:	02/01/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	10 - 14 Years

About the Author

James Leck was born in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, in 1973. He is a high school teacher who has spent a lot of time around teenagers, using their sardonic and offbeat voices in his writing. He is author of The Adventures of Jack Lime and After Dark.

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Editorial Reviews

Leck cleverly retrofits the detective genre with kid-friendly noir touchstones in three short cases starring the narcoleptic, quick-thinking junior gumshoe Jack Lime.—Booklist

With its tongue-in-cheek Raymond Chandler-esque first-person narration laced with gleefully clichéd slang, this one is perfect for Chet Gecko grads.—Kirkus Reviews

You don't need to reinvent the wheel for a great detective story, but you do need a terrific sense of style. Jack Lime's got it in spades.—Booklist, Starred Review

From the Publisher

Gr 8 Up—High school student Jack Lime investigates crimes involving a stolen bicycle, pets held hostage for homework coercion, and missing students. These three intertwined stories are told in a nonlinear manner, with some events being related out of order to increase dramatic detail. All three are peppered with noir-fiction references and dialogue reminiscent of hard-boiled detectives like Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade, a technique unlikely to be recognized or appreciated by teens. The noir styling is at times forced, resulting in contrived situations, and characters are generally flat and one-dimensional, most notably the femme fatales who are uniformly meaningful only for their attractiveness and propensity for betrayal. The mysteries are filled with the interesting red herrings befitting any noir homage, and their brevity could appeal to younger teens looking for a quick read, but frequent references to physical attacks, extortion, and student-run gambling rings appear to target an older audience. In terms of appeal, they are comparable to Alan Gratz's "Horatio Wilkes" series (Dial).—Natasha Forrester, Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR

School Library Journal

More high school noir, centered on a humorless amateur gumshoe for whom a punch in the nose is all in a day's work. Jack's face is still damaged after the capers in the previous casebook (The Adventures of Jack Lime, 2010). It takes further poundings as he tails the boyfriend of a slinky classmate to a forbidden dodgeball game run by local gangbangers and shortly afterward is pressed into service to recover a stolen comic by a punk collector with a violent temper. Being slower on the uptake than he should be, he is also repeatedly framed by a smooth operator--to the point that the school's football team is treating him like a pinball in the halls and Principal Snit is on the verge of expelling him for good. Surrounded by a typical teen crowd of molls, geeks, plug uglies and people who are smarter than he is, Jack nonetheless manages to hold his own thanks to relentless focus, a sharp eye for clues and the occasional flash of insight. By the end, more than one murky scheme has been exposed, though a wild twist signals that Jack's labors aren't over yet. Jack's advanced age notwithstanding, this is just the ticket for upper-elementary and middle school mystery lovers. A winning formula, replete with wince-worthy contretemps reported in properly poker-faced prose. (Mystery. 10-12)

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