Inspector Flytrap is actually a carnivorous plant, a Venus flytrap in a clay pot. The intrepid plant detective is able to zoom around town solving mysteries for distraught clients because his assistant, an omnivorous goat named Nina, pushes him around on a skateboard.
In this giddy series debut written by Tom Angleberger (the Origami Yoda series; Horton Halfpott) and illustrated by Newbery Honor author Cece Bell (El Deafo), Inspector Flytrap and Nina solve three "BIG DEAL" mysteries (not just any silly "small-deal" mysteries like missing pickle paperweights). Indeed, Inspector Flytrap cracks only serious cases, such as the "Da Vinci Cold," in which a Da Vinci painting has a mysterious yellow blob on it (kind of disgusting, really); the "Mystery of the Stinky Cookies" in which the cookies at Koko Dodo's Cookie Shop are not stinky, but the bathtub-sized shoe on the top of the building sure is; and the "Mystery of the Missing Rose" at Snooty la Tooty Gardens, in which a rose is stolen by yet another goat with a skateboard, that later crashes into--surprise!--a pickle paperweight. Nina the goat's eagerness to eat or lick anything is the key to solving most of the cases. On the other hand, her indiscriminate voraciousness creates all sorts of new disasters.
Bell's comical black-and-white illustrations, large type, snappy dialogue and rampant hilarity guarantee fly-through reading, and comic book-style inserts à la Captain Underpants serve as clever asides to the detective duo's silly antics. Readers will snap up this series debut like a Venus flytrap in a cloud of gnats. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness