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Playground Noir is a series of six short stories starring Philip "Pip" Fencer, a kid detective who solves mysteries in the fictional town of Chandler, Colorado. These mysteries are usually pretty mundane -- Pip catches thieves, calls out scammers at his elementary school, and tries to figure out who's spreading nasty rumors about his sister -- but the stories are written in an over-the-top, hard-boiled style, which suggests that these goings-on are very serious business, matters of life and death even. Pip thinks of himself as a detective, refers to his squirt gun as his sidearm, and says things like "the smell hit me like a Thunder-Punch He-Man" in imitation of noir heroes like Sam Spade and Lew Archer.
The stories are also set in the late 1980's, partly because kids had a little more freedom back then, but mostly because I was an 80's kid myself and I'm more familiar with the kid culture of that decade. There are tons of 80's references in these stories:
"The dirty floor was carpeted, and colored blood-red and black; Mumm-Ra might have liked it for his living room."
"It was bright up here, very bright. I felt vaguely as though I'd just escaped the gloomy depths of Jabba's palace, and emerged into a kind of junky Tatooine."
And so on. The over-the-top style made these stories a lot of fun to write.
The six stories are:
The Black Trapper Keeper. A haughty blonde asks Pip to help recover her stolen necklace. But is there more to this seemingly simple case than meets the eye?
Goodbye, My Galaga. Pip investigates a string of robberies at the local arcade, which culminate in the theft of a full-sized Galaga cabinet. Can Pip catch the thief before he strikes again?
The Slumberous Party. Pip's own sister hires him to find out who's been spreading nasty rumors about her at school. She invites the suspects to a slumber party, to play the ultimate game of truth or dare...and it's up to Pip to figure out who's been backstabbing who.
The Kid With the Atomic Brain. A weapons deal (for Nerf guns and water pistols) in the park goes bad, and Pip, hired to run security, is caught in the middle of it. In this cutthroat world, he soon discovers that he can't trust anyone.
The Far Side of the Slide. What starts as a simple case of extortion -- bullies appropriating lunch money from C.J. Daly's hapless second-graders -- turns into something much more serious. Soon Pip is investigating a shady baseball card racket, and kicking himself for agreeing to take the case in the first place.
The Long Recess. On the last day of school, Pip finds himself matching wits with the prankster who destroyed the school's plumbing. He's got less than an hour to identify this mad cherry-bomber...and if he can't find him, it'll be Pip himself facing the principal's wrath.
Most of these titles are references to famous crime thrillers -- The Slumberous Party is a riff on Ross Macdonald's The Barbarous Coast; The Far Side of the Slide is a riff on The Far Side of the Dollar; and of course Goodbye, My Galaga and The Long Recess are plays on Raymond Chandler novels.
As I said, I really enjoyed writing these stories and there's a pretty good chance I'll wind up writing some more -- I have ideas (and silly titles) for several more mysteries, including The Dirt Under the Monkey Bars, No Girls Allowed, and The M.U.S.C.L.E.S Mystery.