The Freshman Detective Blues

I've been to all the lectures. I've read all the "classics," from Catcher in the Rye all the way back to the Epic of Gilgamesh. Yet, I willingly blaspheme the literary world for the sake of this great tome. Possibly one of the best openings I've ever read (even better than "The Invisible Man," and that opening's pretty sweet), it hooked me as soon as I finished the first paragraph. You can read the synopsis above to get the general plotting for this book, but I feel like it denies you the true treasure in this lost bounty: The Characters. Eddie and Jack are, quite possibly, the most vivid characters I've ever encountered. I can't tell you what it is in P.J.'s writing (I'll stab in the dark and say that perhaps it's the gimmicky, half-winking-half-serious prose), but these characters LIVE. They don't just sit on the page and rot, like a lot of characters do in so called modern classics (i.e. Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy"...). They jump up out of the book, and then start having adventures not even contained in the book. I don't know. There's just too much stuff in this book. Whether it's the awkward and forced anti-drug statement about the Bat-Brats (two twins who, thanks soley to their parents use of drugs in the 70's, are inexplicably evil... Ah, baby-boomer guilt...), or the totally hokey love story involving Wendy Westfall (she's so dreamy!), it is a must-read.

That is the exact same question Jack, Eddie, and Julie in the book " The Freshman Detective Blues" had to answer when a skeleton was discovered in the lake at the Grizzly Creek Marina Resort at which they lived, and their answer to the question was "no one." When Eddie and Jack found a body in the lake, all of their friends and family that lived at the resort became suspects in a murder case. With a little Columbo style detective work, Eddie, Jack, and Eddie's sister Julie work together to get the facts about was at Grizzly Creek Marina Resort nine years ago. They use the facts to find out who could've dumped a body in the lake. I personally liked this book but I was kind of disappointed at the same time. My disappointment came when the author left out gory details when talking about the bank robbery and when Eddie and Jack find the skeleton in the lake. So if you can do without too many details, you'll like this book.

Have you ever been walking and found something really freaky on the side of the road? In The Freshmen Detective Blues that happened to Jack and Eddie were walking around this pond in the country by a forest where they fish and swim at looking for mysterious objects they people might have dropped or misplaced. While searching they discover mans' body attached to a boat motor. But the motor looked familar. It was a motor off a boat of the local marina. When they found that out they searched the logs and got some names of people who were at the marina that day. That's when the detective work comes into play. After days and days of searching they finally find the murderer. To find out I guess you will just have to read the book. I enjoyed this book because it ended a chapter in the middle of an event, making it so you had to keep reading on to find out the result of that event. It's very suspenseful and has a lot of good twists and turns.