Gideon Green in Black and White

In Henry’s (This Will Be Funny Someday) funny, heartwarming take on film noir, retired 16-year-old detective Gideon Green routinely wears a trench coat and felt fedora, and—following the fall of his once-successful kid detective agency—eats alone in the school cafeteria. But when his former best friend Lily Krupitsky-Sharma, who dumped him in the seventh grade, approaches him for help, he agrees—hoping to prove that “I was right to consider myself a detective.” Lily, now the school newspaper’s features editor, wants to write a story about an uptick in nonviolent crime in their Southern California town, San Miguel—and Gideon has the detecting skills she needs. So he joins the newspaper as copy editor, a gig that involves detecting “what’s wrong,” but the stakes are considerably raised when the duo discovers a dead man. Gideon proves equal to his noir heroes, falls into a rousing romance with the newspaper editor, and heals his troubled relationship with his single-parent dad in an entertaining, emotional read. Snippets of the story rendered in noir-style prose add an amusing note to the writing’s overall excellence. Gideon is of Mexican descent; Lily is “a brown girl with two moms.” Ages 13–up. Agent: Sarah LaPolla, Bradford Literary. (May)