Half Moon Investigations

by Eoin Colfer

Hardcover, 2006

Status

Available

Local notes

Fic Col

Barcode

6757

Collection

Genres

Publication

Miramax (2006), 304 pages

Description

Twleve-year-old private investigator Fletcher Moon, nicknamed "Half Moon" because of his shortness, must track down a conspiracy or be framed for a crime he did not committ.

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2006-03

Physical description

7.81 inches

User reviews

LibraryThing member YogiABB
My son and I just finished this book. We read it for his nightly story time. It is a lot of fun for a 10 year old boy and his Dad to read. It is about a boy, Fletcher Moon, who obtained his detective certification on the internet after, of course, lying about his age. He is smaller than other boys
Show More
his age so his nickname is Half Moon.

He hires himself out to other kids to solve crimes. He falls into a real tangled nest that gets him framed and crossways with the real law and quite an adventure results. He runs away from home and hangs out with the town's outlaw family under disguise while he tries to unravel the various threads of a big conspiracy in town.

Half Moon is very Spocklike in his ability to analyze evidence and make deductions. He also has a password that gets him internet access to the local police records. Son loved this guy.

Half Moon even gets friendly, but not quite romantic, with a very pretty 12 year old girl in town ("That's embarrassing!" son tells me, "don't talk about it", I'm told. I tell him "there is nothing quite like an older woman", "Ahhhhhh" he yells, "Mom, Dad is embarrassing me again!" My son and I have a lot of fun during story time, or at least I do.)

The book is set in Ireland which makes it all that much more exotic.

Of course Half Moon figures it all out and is a hero in the end. He doesn't quite get the girl (that would probably ruin it for this age group of boy, maybe next time.) Son and I both loved this book and recommend it heartily to any 10 year old boy.
Show Less
LibraryThing member LAteacher
Half-Moon Investigations shows that even without a shiny dectective's badge, you can still be a detective. Sometimes in mystery books the solution is so obvious that the reader finds it before the characters, but in this book the reader is completely clueless. Half-Moon Investigations is very
Show More
captivating. When you get to the climax you will not be able to put it down.
Show Less
LibraryThing member LAteacher
This book is about a boy desperately solving mysteries, because his life depends on it. Somebody trapped Fletcher Moon inside the case he was solving. With that, Fletcher meets his partner, Red Sharkey. Both of them slowly solved the case, with a start of clueless minds. Half Moon Investigations is
Show More
a really exciting and wonderful book to read.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Cjestme
Very funny, could appeal to boys and girls, quietly makes you think about stereotypes and power of information, and choices. Very enjoyable audio version.
LibraryThing member ewyatt
Fletcher "Half Moon" Moon is proud to have completed an online detective school, even if he did have to pretend he was his dad to be old enough to be eligible for his badge. He has been solving mysteries for as long as he can remember. When his latest case gets him in hot water and links him to Red
Show More
(the reluctant criminal member of a local crime family), he is on the run to uncover his toughest mystery yet and to keep himself and Red out of big trouble. This was an entertaining read and a really good choice for mystery fans.
Show Less
LibraryThing member SamuelW
Where Colfer fans once read about a twelve-year-old genius on the wrong side of the law, now they can read about a twelve-year-old genius on the side of truth and justice. Half-Moon Investigations is a whole lot of fun, and fans of Artemis Fowl won’t be disappointed at all. There may be no
Show More
gunfire or trolls to contend with, but Colfer’s trademark wit and snappy direct speech remain, along with the wonderful quick-thinking of his main characters. When Fletcher finally saves the day, readers will, once again, be gaping about how clever his methods were.

Writing a fully-fledged crime story with characters aged from ten to twelve-years-old would certainly be challenging, but Colfer has pulled it off stunningly and made it look easy. The ages of the detectives and suspects do not hold the novel back at all – if anything, they improve it! Colfer has painted a wonderfully cheeky picture of a schoolyard, where junior-school students have their own social hierarchies and unwritten rules for dealing with their problems, right down to what the different types of schoolyard fights are, and how to win each type. The character of the principal, Mrs Quinn, an obsessive, intimidating woman with two huge guard dogs, adds wonderfully to this ‘school through the eyes of a child’ take on writing. It’s not strictly realism, but it’s unrealistic in a good way – an intentional exaggeration of dog-eat-dog junior-school life – and it is one of this book’s strongest features.

Of course, with any mystery novel, the inevitable question is: ‘is it predictable?’ In the case of Half Moon Investigations, the answer is ‘definitely not.’ This is one of those fantastic books where most of the evidence is there for readers to study and guess the perpetrator, but very few people will actually guess correctly. If you enjoy trying to predict endings, then this is the book for you.

If you loved The Supernaturalist, Artemis Fowl, or even if you just like to watch CSI, then you are sure to enjoy Half-Moon Investigations. Another highly-recommended thrill-ride from our favourite crime author.
Show Less
LibraryThing member francescadefreitas
Hilarious, if improbable story, lots of lovely Irish details. Overall I enjoyed the plot and the characters.
The narrator on the audiobook had a very irritating pseudo-Irish accent, and at times it sounded as if expressions had been altered for an American audience, for example, "It does exactly
Show More
what it says on the can."
Show Less
LibraryThing member kaiserestates
Fletcher is forced to realize that his chosen profession is not an easy job as he tries to solve the case that he has gotten himself wrapped up in and is a suspect! In the end it is his detective work that helps the police solve the case.
LibraryThing member williampx2014
This is a book great for Young Adults like many other people say. The vocabulary in this book is not going to confuse the reader if they don't understand plus, the plot is entertaining. The plot of the story is simple and sweet, and also has some comedy in it so if you start to get bored, you get
Show More
interested again. I mean, Eoin's books are always pretty suspenseful and funny(at times). Why would this one be an exception? Just to wrap things up, this is not a book for 60 year old man wanting to read a classic book, no. This is just a book for teens(Or kids) who want ot have a jolly time in their spare time.
Show Less
LibraryThing member kateweber
Fletcher (Half - a nickname given because of his stature) Moon is the only seventh grade licensed detective in his town. Normally working under the radar, he's forced into the middle of a case when he becomes a suspect. His partnership with one of the kids from the "bad" family in town leads to a
Show More
meaningful friendship, as they solve the case together.
Show Less
LibraryThing member RoDor
Fletcher Moon has been detecting since he was three years old. He led the care worker to her missing engagement ring in Mary Ann's diaper. Now he's in seventh grade and his classmate April hires him to solve a crime. It leads him to a series of clues and also other criminals and their crimes.
Show More
Before he can crack the case, Moon finds himself framed for a crime. He has twelve hours to find the culprit or he is the criminal. Hilarious!
Show Less
LibraryThing member chocolatechip
half moon is on a quest to solve the mystery and find the culprit after he is framed. the end was a little stretched....o well, it was still good
LibraryThing member TheoClarke
Schoolboy detective solves school mysteries for his playmates for a fee. There are genuine cases here and Colfer treats the boy's aspirations with witty sensitivity and a love of laughter.
LibraryThing member kayceel
This book was completely delightful! My 7(almost 8) year-old and I listened to this together and laughed so much at Fletcher's cleverness and exploits. The reader's authentic Irish accent didn't hurt, either!

Whole-heartedly recommended!
LibraryThing member krizia_lazaro
This was an easy book to read. Great for kids from grade 2 to grade 6. I really did not like it that much because I felt that the book was too juvenile. Nancy Drew mysteries are better and more exciting but this one is definitely better written. It was exciting but I was kind of disappointed with
Show More
the ending.

If you're a fan of Eoin Colfer then you can read this. Fletcher Moon is the total opposite of Artemis Fowl. :)
Show Less
LibraryThing member ejmeloche
Middle-school detective Fletcher Moon finds himself in the middle of a crime wave and in order to investigate, needs to team up with the town's biggest family of criminals.

Colfer departs from his usual fantasy genre to foray into mystery, and though his fast-paced style made the genre leap, the
Show More
novelty of plot and storyline did not. Half-Moon Agencies seemed to be an homage to film noir detectives like Sam Spade, and, as a consequence, the tone does not match the intended audience. The strength of the novel is its cast of memorable and amusing characters-- the crime family, the club of boy-hating girls, the principal perplexingly obsessed with good and bad, and, of course, little Half-Moon himself.

The characters are not enough to save the otherwise ho-hum story. Only recommended for libraries interested in growing their mystery collection.
Show Less
LibraryThing member tjsjohanna
I quite enjoyed this detective novel set in the world of twelve year olds. Mr. Colfer blends the world weary attitude of a hard-boiled private investigator and the school room world of pre-teens to create a funny and entertaining novel.
LibraryThing member DanielaS.B1
(Spoilers)

Fletcher Moon, nicknamed Half Moon is the world's youngest detective. After getting a private investigation, a terrible incident happens that puts him in the hospital and Half Moon is the scapegoat for a fire. After getting rescued from the hospital, Half Moon joins up with the Red
Show More
Sharkey to solve the fire event and an even darker case. Half Moon goes undercover as a Sharkey to try and solve this mystery. (The Sharkeys are the towns most notorious crime family.) After some investigating, Half Moon figures out that this group of girls was trying to get disruptive boys kicked out of school so that they could get a better education. After getting things fixed up with this group, the duo figures out that they had nothing to do with the fire. Half Moon does more investigating and finds out that the fire had to do with the talent show coming up. It turns out that the year before this girl came in last place. Her father was secretly getting other contestants kicked out of the talent show so she could win. Half Moon solves the case and his record is wiped clear of the fire.

I thought that this book was extremely interesting. I liked how the author made the storyline turn out. What I didn't like is how he added so much drama to the story that it became extremely unrealistic. Fletcher is only twelve. Other than that I liked the book.
Show Less
LibraryThing member JohnGrant1

I was planning to get round at last to reading the author's Artemis Fowl and somehow ended up with this book in my hands instead. 12-year-old Fletcher Moon, nicknamed "Half" because he's small, is obsessed with the notion of being a detective. There's a crime wave hitting his school, and he's
Show More
commissioned by one of the "pink girls" to solve the mystery of a stolen lock of a pop star's hair, bought from eBay and now purloined. Following clues, he discovers this theft is part of a much larger and far more alarming picture; to solve the case he has to ally himself with Rod Sharkey, the unrecognized honest member of the local petty-crime lords.

The first score or so of pages of this book are electric, Colfer catches the Chandleresque tone very nicely indeed as he introduces Moon and the situation. But then he strips back the style to something more serviceable, clearly feeling the hardboiled voice would get in the way of the storytelling. I'm not sure he made the right decision. Even though the tale rattles along very nicely and I was never bored, it was those half-dozen instances later on where the PI verbal whipcracks re-emerged for a page or two that I really sat up and enjoyed myself. Colfer must be given full credit for making this a real mystery that it's important be solved, despite its being set largely among schoolchildren.

All in all, I found this plenty of fun but a bit lighter weight than it needed to have been.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Cheryl_in_CC_NV
Pretty darn cute - exciting and funny and heart-warming. I liked it better than Artemis Fowl.
LibraryThing member callmecayce
Odd, but extremely endearing book. The story of a kid who thinks he's a detective and ends up trying to solve a crime that could have serious consequences. Well written and with strong characters. I really liked the story and the book over all.
LibraryThing member Lunarsong
Fun and compelling. Read straight through without putting it down.

Similar in this library

Rating

½ (361 ratings; 3.7)
Page: 0.8474 seconds