Ghost Hunters Adventure Club and the Secret of the Grande Chateau

In the mood for a snarky narrator? Read on as every trope about kid detectives gets gleefully skewered.

Two clean-cut teenaged brothers team up with a plucky young woman to investigate mysterious goings-on at a spooky hotel.  Hidden treasure is involved, as are secret passageways equipped with booby traps.  Side characters include a bumbling cop, a smarmy big-city type, and a menacing thug.  There’s gunfire and fisticuffs.  It all sounds a little like a Hardy Boys-meet-Nancy Drew adventure, right?   

Well . . . not exactly.

According to Dr. Cecil H.H. Mills, our oh-so-arch narrator, the brothers – J.J. and Valentine Watts – are “idiots.”   They also lie to the police, steal hotel towels, practice dine-and-dash in the chateau’s restaurant, fight with each other, and generally engage in behavior that would make the morally upright Hardy Boys drop their flashlights.  Trudi de la Rosa, the third member of this knuckleheaded trio, isn’t much better.  She’s brusque, insensitive, and a real whiz at breaking into hotel rooms.

Readers who’ve enjoyed the metafiction of A Series of Unfortunate Events should appreciate the self-congratulatory Dr. Mills, who pops briefly into the story as a character before resuming his role as omniscient and world-weary narrator, happy to inform the reader that he is only writing this ridiculous book for the money.

This is the first title in what is currently a two-book series.