The Short Con (Pops and Branwell Mysteries, 1)
Product ID: 47107005
" True Detective meets Encyclopedia Brown but set in a girls' orphanage." ยRich Barrett, Mental Floss A loving and hilarious pastiche of the detective genre. Legendary kid detective "Pops" Popowski prefers to work alone. But when she's saddled with a rookie partner named Mary Branwell, Pops won't stop until she discovers who offed Mary's parents, whether Branwell wants her to or not. Pops and Branwell is now a CN Mini on Cartoon Network! Aleks Sennwald is a writer and storyboard artist for the hit TV show Adventure Time . Pete Toms is the Ignatz-nominated author of In Post. The Short Con is their first graphic novel. Review: GREAT BOOK and way to book!! - This book is so cute I can barely stand it. The two girls at the center of it are multi dimensional and very empowering for young girls (or grown adult women) to read about. Review: Even Better Than the Setup Suggests - O.K., the setup is pretty grabby. Mary Branwell, a rich kid newly orphaned as a consequence of her parents' mysterious deaths, shows up at an odd orphanage that is home to a child detective agency. She's assigned as a new rookie partner to "Pops" Popowski, the orphanage's crack homicide detective. Their first case together? Looking into the possible murder of Mary's parents. Now, that was quite enough to get me interested in looking at this book. What I did not expect was how shrewd, sharp, edgy, self-referential and drop dead funny the writing would be. Pops is a mouthy crackerjack, and after a slow start Mary holds her own as Pops' partner. Within the first few pages we have funny throwaway references to Jane Eyre, Nietzsche, Sylvia Plath, existential angst, orphanages, and Ellio Ness. We learn that shifty developers break down and then move into and redevelop poor neighborhoods by burying vampires in them to scare off the original tenants, (a process called "vampification"). Pops is just a stream of consciousness wiseguy machine, but some of what she says and does is priceless. The focus, of course, is kidding the detective genre, mostly as it is portrayed in CSI type TV shows and the like. We get the usual secondary characters - the head nun tough precinct captain, the nerdy computer researcher/hacker, Pops' vaguely remembered former partners, and so on. Everyone keeps commenting explicitly on the memes and tropes they're mocking, and all of the characters are aware of the fact that they are involved in some complex parody. So, the whole story is sort of a funny commentary on itself, which is in any event a funny story. The drawings feel a bit cartoony at first, but with their scrambled high energy and exaggeration they enhance and support the antic feel of the narrative. And that was fine by me because this book is really carried not by the illustrations but by the dialogue, cross-talk, throwaways and monologues from Pops. Everything else was a bonus. So, this was a hip, sometimes deadpan and sometimes in your face, cheerful, witty romp of a sendup. It is well crafted and briskly paced, and just an overall hoot. A happy find. (Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book in exchange for a candid review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)
| Best Sellers Rank | #6,722,474 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #1,666 in Children's Books on Orphans & Foster Homes #16,088 in Mystery Graphic Novels #21,157 in Children's Mystery, Detective, & Spy |
| Customer Reviews | 5.0 out of 5 stars 3 Reviews |
L**Y
GREAT BOOK and way to book!!
This book is so cute I can barely stand it. The two girls at the center of it are multi dimensional and very empowering for young girls (or grown adult women) to read about.
P**P
Even Better Than the Setup Suggests
O.K., the setup is pretty grabby. Mary Branwell, a rich kid newly orphaned as a consequence of her parents' mysterious deaths, shows up at an odd orphanage that is home to a child detective agency. She's assigned as a new rookie partner to "Pops" Popowski, the orphanage's crack homicide detective. Their first case together? Looking into the possible murder of Mary's parents. Now, that was quite enough to get me interested in looking at this book. What I did not expect was how shrewd, sharp, edgy, self-referential and drop dead funny the writing would be. Pops is a mouthy crackerjack, and after a slow start Mary holds her own as Pops' partner. Within the first few pages we have funny throwaway references to Jane Eyre, Nietzsche, Sylvia Plath, existential angst, orphanages, and Ellio Ness. We learn that shifty developers break down and then move into and redevelop poor neighborhoods by burying vampires in them to scare off the original tenants, (a process called "vampification"). Pops is just a stream of consciousness wiseguy machine, but some of what she says and does is priceless. The focus, of course, is kidding the detective genre, mostly as it is portrayed in CSI type TV shows and the like. We get the usual secondary characters - the head nun tough precinct captain, the nerdy computer researcher/hacker, Pops' vaguely remembered former partners, and so on. Everyone keeps commenting explicitly on the memes and tropes they're mocking, and all of the characters are aware of the fact that they are involved in some complex parody. So, the whole story is sort of a funny commentary on itself, which is in any event a funny story. The drawings feel a bit cartoony at first, but with their scrambled high energy and exaggeration they enhance and support the antic feel of the narrative. And that was fine by me because this book is really carried not by the illustrations but by the dialogue, cross-talk, throwaways and monologues from Pops. Everything else was a bonus. So, this was a hip, sometimes deadpan and sometimes in your face, cheerful, witty romp of a sendup. It is well crafted and briskly paced, and just an overall hoot. A happy find. (Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book in exchange for a candid review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)
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