The animal kingdom’s greatest spy stars in a series of kids books

We here at the Family Valued detective agency, cricket nursery, and school for Humphrey Bogart impressions have randomly selected an 11-year-old from among the one immediately available.

Talk to me about Chet Gecko.

Chet Gecko is a private eye in different mysteries about elementary school animals. Chet Gecko has his own private eye agency and his assistant is Natalie, a mockingbird. He solves mysteries for people, like my-sister’s-gone-missing-can-you-do-something-about-it?

The Malted Falcon was really cool because I’ve seen the movie The Maltese Falcon. The book was really cool because they used some of my favorite Chet Gecko characters plus some of my favorite characters from the movie. In it, Chet Gecko tries to get the Malted Falcon, this ultimate falcon made out of candy. There are others who are after it also, so he has to try and get it before the others do. It was cool!

I’m currently reading Key Lardo. It’s about these two sisters who are birds. There’s this penguin who’s really fat and he’s a detective from England. His name is James Bland, which is really funny.

These are animals that live in an elementary school?

The animals are personified like they’re actual people except they’re animals. They’re kind of like those cat spy books, but he isn’t a spy and he isn’t a cat. He’s a gecko.

You’ve been reading this series for a long time.

Yeah, because the books take a long time to come out. It just seems like a long time.

Who would like these books?

Anybody who knows what a classic mystery is and knows what school is like. They are very funny, but Chet Gecko and Natalie make terrible jokes.

January, 2006