I picked this up because I finished Giant Days, and I really enjoyed that, so I figured I'd see what else John Allison has to offer. I'm not super into the supernatural stuff, so this seemed closer to the tone of Giant Days. And, I suppose it was -- at least, Charlotte Grote, the protagonist, has a lot of the same characteristics as Esther de Groot, one of the characters in Giant Days, including a sort of frenetic energy and an inability to function unless her personal grooming needs are met. As far as the story, Charlotte is a celebrated teen detective, who is accused when an attempt is made on a colleague's life at an awards ceremony. She finds herself on the wrong end of the law, but is totally devoid of any kind of worry, rather exuding indignance, both that she should be accused and that her amazing powers of detection should be utterly ignored by law enforcement. She is thrust into a kind of indentured servitude with the police and given menial office tasks, until she shows some insights into some ongoing cases, and she manages to endear herself to the other officers. I realize this is a comic book, and the characters and situations are exaggerated. I also recognize that this is the beginning of the series, so there is a lot of establishing narrative going on here. But, it didn't really grab me, not like Giant Days did. I will probably look out for the next volume, since I try never to base my ultimate opinion on the pilot (at least in TV, which this resembles far more than a book or even graphic novel series), and I have faith in John Allison. Mostly I found Lottie annoying, so there's nowhere to go but up! ( )

Long-time John Allison character Charlotte Grote from Bad Machinery, Giant Days, etc. really shines in this solo outing as a recent high school grad cum police consultant by way of an inconvenient murder frame-up that has her under halfway house detention. Not much progress is made on the big case, but we do have a couple self-contained mysteries to tide us over involving cell phone theft and casino robberies.

Charlotte natters on in a most charming way as she annoys everyone around her and serves up creative deductive insights straight out of Sherlock.

I would love to see this become Allison's next regular thing following the wrap-up of Giant Days. It's so much better than the Steeple nonsense to which he has devoted too much time recently. ( )