Bountiful Brains

ChicagoLand Detective Agency 1: The Drained Brains Caper by Trina Robbins, Illustrated by Tyler Page

I read this book using NetGalley.com.

This book gets a 3 gnomes and a hat out of 5 gnomes, it's a really fun read and the drawing is well done but sadly the one I read was in black and white it would have definitely would have been a 4 out of 5 if the whole book was in color.

The two main characters are pretty well fleshed out for what's essentially an origin story.  Megan's writing in haikus is a nice touch to the dialogue.  The villain is great and reminded me of Count Olaf from the A Series of Unfortunate Events books with the way she kept changing her persona.


Megan's new in town and looking for a tarantula but instead she meets Raf at his Mom's pet store.  She and Raf become friends and she is definitely the more outgoing one.  Megan goes to school at Stepford Academy where everyone is just way too happy and doesn't say anything negative about the school.  I really liked the reference to the Stepford wives they threw in there with the naming of the school.  One day Megan sees a kid say some weird stuff in class after she shares her lunch with him.  So of course she has to figure out why. 

So as to not throw out too many spoilers you do indeed find out why the kids are so happy.  My favorite character that we get to meet in this volume is Bailey, a talking dog who likes old detective shows.

Overall a fast and fun read that I would recommend to anyone who like zombies or detectives.