#1229: Minor Felonies – Bear Bottom (2021) by Stuart Gibbs

I had hoped to diversify these Minor Felonies posts this month, and to bring in some new authors who might produce well-structured juvenile detective fiction. But, well, that didn’t work out, and so instead I guess I’ll just have to return to Stuart Gibbs’ FunJungle, perhaps the best series of detective novels for 8 to 12 year-olds currently on the market.

Although, as it turns out, Bear Bottom (2021) doesn’t take place in or near FunJungle at all — as Gibbs says in the acknowledgements, “if FunJungle suffered one more major crisis, it was either going to go bankrupt or the government was going to have to shut it down.” — but rather on the Oy Vey Corral, owned by Sidney and Heidi Krautheimer. Teenage sleuth Teddy Fitzroy has been invited there, along with his mother and father, by FunJungle owner J.J. McCracken who is thinking of buying the ranch to develop as his next tourist attraction. J.J. has also brought along his teenage daughter Summer, who is dating Teddy, and his wife Kandace, as well as Pete Thwacker, FunJungle’s permanently fire-extinguishing head of public relations, and his husband Ray. It is supposed to be a relaxing, enjoyable time for everyone to see the benefit of adding the Oy Vey Corral to the FunJungle brand. It will not be.

Even before Sasquatch, the eponymous bear, gets involved, Teddy is roped into a mystery by head ranger Jasmine Creek, namely the disappearance of two purebred bison from the Krautheimer’s ranch. The means by which Jasmine becomes convinced the bison have been stolen rather than just killed — it would be possible, given the vast spaces involved, to overlook a couple of bison in several hundred, after all — are pretty clever, and demonstrate the unshowy intelligence that makes this series so enjoyable. This will prove to be the secondary plot, as is the case with these books, and will get solved, while in an interesting fashion, sort of by accident, but it’s a novel problem and nice to see Gibbs stretching his legs in consider matters such as the suitability of selectively breeding cattle, Native American rights, and the accepted historical narrative around aspects of the country’s past.

It’s the arrival of Kandace, sporting a necklace worth around $8 million, that really kicks things into gear. That evening, when everyone has gone to bed, Sasquatch, the largest bear on the ranch, breaks into the house and forces his way into the locked bedroom where Kandace and Summer are sleeping. After helping himself to some food, he flees the scene, and shortly thereafter Kandace realises the necklace is missing. Since, for reasons I’m not going to go into here, it’s very unlikely indeed that anyone in the room at the same time as Sasquatch took the jewels, could the bear have eaten them? And, since it seems very likely indeed that he didn’t, how could they have been taken from a locked room prior to the bear’s arrival?

The dual-headed narrative, then, progresses with the same easy lightness and velocity that have marked out the FunJungle books, with a variety of other events — including a search party getting trapped in a mine by a cave-in, a buffalo stampede, and a bull breaking free at a rodeo and almost goring Teddy to death — mixing together to draw a well-rounded portrait both of the people involved and the events which have conspired to make the course of action pursued seem necessary. Gibbs is very good at this and, while his plots might not converge with the same inevitability as seen elsewhere in this series, the time passes quickly, easily, and without it ever occurring to you to be less than wholly engaged at any point.

I’m not sure how many FunJungle books we’re going to get from Gibbs — like many authors for younger readers, he has diversified into several series — although a ninth entry has just been announced for 2025. However long it lasts, I’d be very impressed if there was a better series of detective novels for younger readers currently being written, and, if you think there is, I’d love to hear of it. For the intelligence of his plots, the honesty of his characters, the heartfelt weaving in of social themes that never override the core ideas, and the high-density, event-rich nature of his developments that rarely turn from the goal of moving things along as efficiently as possible he deserves huge praise. I will look forward to these for as long as Gibbs continues to write them; if you’re one of the people who reads these Minor Felonies posts and you still haven’t tried FunJungle, buy a ticket at your earliest convenience.

Stuart Gibbs’ mysteries for younger readers:

FunJungle