created Wednesday, 2025 June 25
original at cybertiggyr.com/jz20khy.html
The Dead Kid Detective Agency is a novel by Evan Munday, published in 2011. Wikipedia contains no page for it nor for Evan Munday, but Amazon has a page for the book.
The intended audience of The DKDA must be teens, which I have not been for 40 years, but I enjoyed it nevertheless. What I liked most was the main character, October. She makes it. Other characters are likable, too, including the one who turns up dead, leaving the reader stunned that the author would dispose of such a likable person. But that's why the murder mystery also holds the reader.
I experienced only 2 irritants from the book. First, it alternates between 1st person & 3rd person with nearly every chapter change. While both points of view are well-written, I preferred October's point of view, & it seemed that we were always leaving one point of view for the other just as I was getting into the feel of the former.
Second, many of the "likes" of the teens in the book seem to me to have been 20 years out of style when the book takes place. I enjoyed spotting the pop culture references from when I was a teen or 20something.
In spite of those 2 gripes, I intend to read other books from the series, & I recommend the book to others (well, others who were teens 40 years ago; I have no idea whether current teens would enjoy it).