Clueless McGee is already being compared by critics to the blockbuster, best-selling "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" series.
Jeff MackAuthor Jeff Mack visited Easthampton more than a decade ago on a tip. He was living in Syracuse but friends recommended the culture, beauty and country living of Easthampton. “It’s a really nice place. There’s a huge group of authors and illustrators living in this area. It was a stroke of luck to join the community,” he said.
Easthampton literally moved him and now, from the silence and solitude of this Hampshire County town, Mack is launching his first “chapter book” – Clueless McGee. Published by Philomel Books, a division of the Penguin Group, Clueless McGee is already being compared by critics to the blockbuster, best selling Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.
“I think it’s great company to be in. I think they’re brilliant. I’m definitely happy to be compared to it,” said Mack.
Mack’s just-released book features the fumbles and foibles of P.J. McGee, a fifth grader aspiring to be just like his detective dad. But P.J. does more slipping than sleuthing. “He’s a bumbling private eye. He generally misreads every clue. He really relies on the help of his best friend – a third grader named Dante who has a much keener eye for solving mysteries,” said Mack.
P.J. endeavors to solve the greatest crimes of his time – in this case, the brazen theft of his beloved mac-and-cheese from the school cafeteria. At times, P.J. is reminiscent of the death defying, dense but never dull Pink Panther star Peter Sellers.
“There’s some similarities,” said Mack. “He’s almost a fifth grade inspector Clouseau.”
That’s Chief Inspector Clouseau – but back to our tale.
Mack tells the story of Clueless McGee through a series of letters P.J. writes to his absentee father who P.J. believes is a private eye working on a secret mission. P.J. has never met his father but writes to him nonetheless. P.J. sends the letters to addresses provided by his father who is always on the move – the detective dad staying one step ahead of the bad guys who keep discovering his secret hideouts.
“P.J.’s training to be a private eye and he wants to join his father on his secret mission. He keeps writing to his father, asking him to come and get him, to take him on the secret mission with him,” says Mack.
P.J. sinks his teeth into the mac-and-cheese mystery, albeit reluctantly because the class bully gets framed for the heist and P.J. is in no mood to exonerate his nemesis. To reveal what happens next would be – cheesy – but suffice it to say, P.J. McGee eventually, painfully solves the case in less time than it takes to age a tasty block of Granville cheddar.
“The reader is always one step ahead of clueless McGee,” said Mack. “Even though he’s the one who’s solving the mystery, the reader has a better sense of what’s going on.”
Mack has plans for at least two more books in the series, and he’s leaving the door open for even more by making sure P.J. is always a bit clueless. “He won’t solve every crime. If he does then he won’t be as clueless as when he started,” said Mack.
“I definitely want to avoid any planned obsolescence.”