It’s a Mystery, Pig Face! Author Interview and ARC Giveaway

In Wendy McLeod MacKnight's It's a Mystery, Pig Face! eleven-year-old Tracy Munroe has three goals to accomplish:

1. Figure out an end-of-summer adventure with her best friend Ralph.

2. Make sure her little brother Lester, aka Pig Face, does not tag along.

3. Get the new boy next door to realize she exists.

But when Tracy and Ralph discover a bag full of money in the baseball field dugout, (and Lester forces them to let him help) they have a mystery on their hands. Did someone lose the cash? Was it stolen? Can the truth be discovered before they are accused of the crime themselves?

Wendy, I absolutely loved this fast-paced middle grade mystery! Where did you get the idea for this book?

Thanks! When I was a kid, my friends and I were always looking for mysteries to solve. We had a bit of a Harriet the Spy thing going – keeping tabs on everyone – but we were always thwarted. The first draft of the book was a real throw-back, the bad guys were grown up, lives were in peril, but thanks to some good advice, I went a little more nuanced. Not that this is a nuanced book by any stretch of the imagination… As for the name Pig Face, I may have called my brother that a few times when we were young a few times and when I was trying to think of a name Tracy might call Lester when he’s being particularly annoying, it popped right into my head.

Tracy and Ralph have a strong friendship. Their relationship faces some tests, yet survives. How do you develop such realistic, well-rounded characters?

I liked the idea of what happens when relationships are tested. Tracy makes some bad decisions, and who hasn’t made bad decisions in their life? And Ralph isn’t immune to making the odd mistake himself. I think that friendships are so important and sometimes so fragile in the upper elementary/early middle grade years, and kids often stumble around because they are afraid of speaking their truth.

I worked a lot on all three of the characters – back story, what they liked and disliked, their private hopes and dreams, most of which didn’t make it into the book, but by the time I was writing in earnest, I knew who they were and how they would react to what was happening around them. Forgiveness and acceptance is a huge theme in this book, and that comes from the characters, not the plot. I will say that my agent, Lauren Galit, and my editor, Alison Weiss, both pushed me to dig deep.

Can you tell MG Minded readers about your publication journey? Is this your first book? How many drafts did it take you to land an agent and then a publisher?

I’m the poster child for IT’S NEVER TOO LATE! I wrote the first draft of this book in 1986 (yes, dinosaurs walked the earth and we had just discovered fire!) I am embarrassed to say I did one revision and then sent it to a Canadian Publishing House, who were very enthusiastic and asked me to send them other things. But I never did. I put it in a drawer and got a job and had a great career for the next twenty-five years, rising to the level of Deputy Minister of Education and Early Childhood. Then one day I woke up and got brave enough to leave to pursue the one regret I had in life – not pursuing my writing career. I took some courses, immersed myself in the MG world again (well, truth be told, I never left it!) and pulled out that old manuscript. And polished and rewrote completely. I think I’d done six drafts by the time I landed my agent, Lauren Galit of LKG Agency. By then I had queried 48 agents. I could tell I was getting close because after the sixth draft, I got all kinds of requests for full manuscripts and the week I signed with Lauren I had two or three agents interested in signing me. The lesson I learned through the process of selling the first book is this: good enough is NOT good enough. Until you can say in your heart that it is as excellent as you can make it, there is no point in submitting. I am still mortified about the first 15 queries I sent out…

Any advice for blog readers wanting to write a middle grade mystery?

Ah, that’s a hard question! I struggled with the mystery aspect for so long: not giving too much away, tossing out lots of red herrings, ensuring it all makes sense. I think you can’t ‘pants’ a mystery, which I am sorry to say I did for my first couple of drafts, and it was a disaster! I would map the mystery out very carefully in advance. You can always tweak it as you’re writing, once your characters come to life and start sending you places you never thought you’d go, but thinking of things on the fly is usually not very successful, I am sorry to say. Unless you are a genius, then have at it! Oh and one more thing: I heard a lot of “There are too many mysteries out there” when I was writing and submitting, but kids love a mystery (as do adults) and there will always be room for mysteries in middle grade fiction!

Thanks so much, Wendy! Great advice!
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Book review: Half Moon Investigations by Eoin Colfer

Title: Half Moon Investigations Author: Eoin Colfer Genre: MG Mystery Pages: 290 Publication date: 2006 Publisher: Puffin Website: halfmooninvestigations.com My rating: 4.5 spitwads / 5

I thought I was a heck of a lot smarter than I really was in middle school.

We had four channels to choose from in my house (2, 6, 8, and 10) and my mom was the official Lady of the Remote from 6:00 until 9:00 on Sundays. After that she allowed my dad to turn it to something else while she went to bed and read herself to sleep. But it was during those three hours, the time when my mother held domination over all things entertainment, when I became a die-hard fan of Murder She Wrote.  

And also when I found out I’d be a terrible private investigator.

Me as a crime solver...

Every episode I watched, I knew the killer. I had the crime pinned on the thief in the first ten minutes. There was no criminal smart enough to escape the sleuthy savviness that was Brooks Benjamin, kid detective. But at the end of every episode I found myself fooled, embarrassed, and convinced that old lady had gotten it wrong. But, you know—I never stopped watching. They fueled my love for mystery and it stayed with me until this day.

Which is why I decided to review Half Moon Investigations by Eoin Colfer. Many of you will recognize the name from the Artemis Fowl series, but those who are sitting there, scratching their heads, trying to figure out how to pronounce his name, just pretend it says “Owen” or “oh, win!” or something like that.

He's grinning because no one knows how to say his name.

Half Moon Investigations follows twelve-year-old Fletcher Moon, the only kid in Lock sharp enough to earn an online degree in gumshoeing. He’s solved more cases than he can think of, but it’s the most recent one that's giving his P.I. skills a metaphorical wedgie.

Fletcher gets “hired” by April to find a lock of hair that turns up missing. A few interrogations later and our MC’s got his sights on Lock’s most infamous thirteen year old criminal, Red Sharkey. Before Fletcher gets a chance to slap the cuffs on ol’ Red, both boys get hurled into the world of arson, assault, and computer hackery with multiple crimes pointing to them as the main suspects!

With the real criminal out there setting them up to take the fall, they have 24 hours to team up, connect the crimes, and discover the true culprit before they’re hauled off by the police for good.

Half Moon Investigations has such a great MG voice and Colfer plugs in a few brilliant moments of pulp to give it that fun, over the top hero-saving-the-day feel to it. There were a couple of times I read a phrase and discovered later that it was an Irish quip of some sort. It was never enough to detract from the story and any good MG reader who had a good language arts teacher could apply that invaluable context clues lesson there and figure it out.

What they probably won’t figure out, though, is the answer to this question: Who was behind all the crimes?

Or at least I didn’t.

I totes let Ms. Fletcher down.

Even after reading the ending again, I still couldn’t find all those clues that would've led me to that particular person. Which means, for me anyway, it sort of came out of left field. Could it be enough to make you throw the book across the room, screaming, “THIS IS HORSERADISH HOW WERE WE SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT, MR. OH-WIN?!?”

Nah. Or at least I hope not.

I mean, it’s not like in some episodes of Mrs. Marple where we find it was the gardener the entire time but we couldn’t have guessed it because we heard the gardener say three words during the entire show and no one ever suspected the gardener because he was in the garden gardening. But it’s certainly not Columbo-obvious, either.

I’m calling this one a happy medium. The reveal was brilliant and the book ends with a hint of a possible sequel. And I hope Colfer decides to continue this series because it’s got humor, action, adventure—every ingredient needed for a good MG mystery. While I was writing this review, I even discovered the BBC produced a TV series based on the book which I'll be searching for as soon as I'm done here.

I'm guessing Red's the one with the mohawk. Because mohawks are for criminals.

So if you love a good whodunit, try Half Moon Investigations, even if you're not a crime solver at heart. Because if you're like me and have already decided that the detective world would be better left to those more worthy...

I completely understand. And I won't even tattle on you when you tell everyone you figured it out.

Happy reading!