Book Review - I Have A Hunch

A lighthearted fun adventure for young teens or tweens.

I Have A Hunch by Jeremy DeCoursey, Self-Published, out November 2019

This is a quite charming, young teen mystery that sometimes occasionally becomes a little silly. (Which the author freely acknowledges)

Our heroine visits her eminently famous, private detective Uncle as a summer job. Her uncle then gets hired to solve a murder, and Alice, our protagonist, is swept along investigating the site, interviewing witnesses, all of whom seem suspicious. Eventually even running afoul of the murderer and having to try to apprehend the killer while not becoming the next victims! But all is brought to a happy conclusion. Running in the background is another more curious mystery, one that is not resolved in this book but appears to be setup to run throughout a series, of which this is the first book.

There are many classic Holmesian tropes in play here: Alice's uncle is the brilliant detective, Alice is a Watsonish every-person, albeit very young, who helps point out just the right things; there is even a grumpy police inspector not unlike Lestrade. All of this is handled usually nicely, but there are a few minor bumps. Happily there are some fresh takes: the brilliant detective lives alone until his niece arrives one summer, he has a love interest although he is still a little awkward about it, the great detective also has some friends who provide high tech assistance.

The author did well enough with creating characters. I found Alice to be quite annoying sometimes, as I'm sure I would find a thirteen year old. I did feel that at times Alice seemed to explain things about English life or London that a young English girl would not think about explaining to herself. She would just know them. I am guessing this is to make it a little easier for American readers. But I feel this is important to note since the story is being told in first person.

The pace moved quickly which I enjoyed. Even though some of the major clues were painfully obvious, the story still did surprise me a few times. It may do well for Young Adult. Although the most obvious things were the grammar errors it seemed quite a few people made.

What I think this book needs most is a good editor. I know a young teen would be obsessed with social media, but the constant references to Instagram in the early chapters was perhaps one time too many. There was an annoying trend in the early chapters to try to teach Alice and the reader some English grammar. As I entered the fourth chapter I wondered if this was going to be an "educational" story. But thankfully that did not continue.  However having many clues and other related humor in the story all revolve around the same feature of grammar got a bit wearisome.  There also seemed to be a few eBook formatting errors, which I have heard can be tricky.

I also got a little frustrated and lost some suspension of disbelief when this supposedly great detective breezes right past several clues, both in the main mystery and the background overarching mystery, which the author even goes to pains to highlight to the reader. That being said, the way Alice's uncle behaved once real and imminent danger arose felt very real and I thought was excellently handled.

Overall I enjoyed it, and I would have no problem recommending it to any of my friends young teens! Good clean fun, without anything to worry cautious parents. I'm actually looking forward to the next book!

Rating 6 out of 10 galaxies

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I Have A Hunch is also available on Indiebound