Half Moon Investigations by Eoin Colfer is a fantastic middle-grade noir-esque detective tale. Colfer starts the book a little heavy in the noir language, but gradually the voice morphs to that of an actual ten year old. It totally makes sense to me because often I'll still find myself (at 23!) narrating my life in whatever style I'm currently hung up. Fletcher Moon is a ten-year old who is determined to be a private detective, obviously at some point this decision was affected by some type of detective noir movie or book. Fletcher gets entangled in the biggest case of his life because he dares to stand up to one of the biggest bad kids in town: Roddy Sharkey. Roddy's brother Red is an even worse kid and Red steals Fletcher's badge. Fletcher wants his badge back, so he agrees to investigate Red for a girl in 5th grade, April. I had started reading this book a couple years ago, but at the time, I was turned off from the language in the beginning chapters. This ti...