Red Handed: The Fine Art of Strange Crimes

Red Handed: The Fine Art of Strange Crimes by Matt Kindt, 264 pages

Kindt is an award-winning artist and author, and this graphic novel ode to hard-boiled detective stories shows us why. Detective Gould is the best crime solver the city of Red Wheelbarrow has ever seen; no murder goes unsolved when he's on the case. But in Red Handed, Gould is dealing with a series of seemingly unrelated (and very odd) crimes masterminded by a mysterious someone whose ultimate goal is unfathomable.

This almost seems like an update of Sherlock Holmes, complete with a mysterious Moriarty (though with a different name); Kindt even compares Gould to Holmes in a newspaper clipping portion of the book. However, the Moriarty in Red Handed comes across as the smarter of the two, and more ink is devoted to his/her criminal strategies than to Gould's investigations. I enjoyed Kindt's artwork, which include several sections of panels that have an unfinished feel to them (pencil lines, fewer colors), as well as some spreads that are entirely talk bubbles. The latter of these are particularly great, as they frame the philosophical debate between Gould and his Moriarty.

This was a good one. I'll definitely be picking up some more of Kindt's work. (And yay for local authors! Kindt lives in Webster Groves!)