What happens when the Boy Detective grows up, moves away, and comes home for a visit? His hometown has turned from American-as-apple-pie to darkest noir, his once-innocent girlfriend has transformed into something both more and less than she was, and his father has become a bum. Both parody and tribute to childhood heroes, Brown Harvest appropriates characters familiar to anyone who grew up reading detective stories. Borrowing from the Hardy Boys to Jay Cantor (Krazy Kat) and setting the characters on a collision path with hard-boiled thrillers, young adult mysteries, and classic noir fiction, Jay Russell creates joyful mayhem.… (more)