A group of former Encyclopedia Brown-style child-detectives struggle to solve an adult mystery.
Three clueless high school nerds, best friends for years, call themselves the "Mystery Team" and solve neighborhood crimes - such as who poked a finger in a pie cooling on a window ledge - cute at seven but foolish at 18. Then, one morning, a young girl pays them a dime to find out who murdered her parents the night before and took her grandmother's ring. Using inept methods, the team lucks onto the trail of the bad guys. Can they bumble to success and a renewed reputation? And what about coming of age?—<[email protected]>
At age seven, Oakdale's Mystery Team was a band of kid detectives dedicated to solving child-sized mysteries (like who put their finger in the pie, and who stole the tricycle), and the town loved them for it. Now they're eighteen years old, about to graduate from high school, yet they're still storming the playground to bust little kids, and the town of Oakdale is sick to death of it.
When a little girl sees their sign advertising "Mysteries Solved, Ten Cents," she asks the gang to find out who killed her parents. The Team embarks on a mystery that takes them deep into a violent conspiracy that sees their lives threatened, their friendship strained and tests their claim that they're "real detectives."
