
Introducing Running Girl, Simon Mason said the book "started with a glimpse (while running) of a character in a crime story":
"... a teenage boy called, say, Jack. Jack is seventeen, lives with his mother in a flat in a big city. Full of danger. He is bright, lazy, interested in girls, etc. Gets into trouble with teachers, his mother, occasionally the police. But he has intelligence, and a conscience."
He's not Jack any more, he's hyper-intelligent, too-cool-for-school Garvie Smith and we want to know what you thought of him.
How does he compare to other famous fictional detectives? Garvie is clearly partly based on the rational, mathematic genius Sherlock Holmes, but he also has a pronounced capacity for empathy more reminiscent of Agatha Christie's master psychologist Hercule Poirot. The gritty realism of the urban underworld that he enters reminds us of Raymond Chandler's hardboiled crime masterpiece The Big Sleep. Perhaps he bears least resemblance to the gently inquisitive Miss Marple! What other crime characters did he remind you of, or deviate from?
What do you think of the tendency, clearly inherited from these canonical crime series, of focusing on a private investigator instead of the police? What are the differences in the plot, characterisation and setting of Running Girl compared to, say, Henning Mankell's Wallander series, which follows the cases of Swedish police inspector Kurt Wallander? Does the freedom from police procedure give the author more license to roam, or do these books lack a grip on reality? Did anyone actually have some sympathy for Inspector Singh's frustration at the persistent interruptions of a young upstart adolescent? Or has Running Girl, featuring both types of protagonist, achieved a kind of balance?
But perhaps most importantly of all though, do you like Garvie? How easy is it to identify with him as a reader (given that we readers function almost like another detective in crime novels, trying to figure out the clues before the characters)?
Email us your thoughts at childrens.books@theguardian.com, get in touch on Facebook or tweet us @GdnChildrensBks! We can't wait to hear what you think!
