Zindel is most remembered for early 70s favorites breaking the YA mold with his quirky characters embroiled in mysteries, mundane high school adolescence and the occasional flying saucer, but I discovered him from this series. P.C. Hawke Mysteries follow the titular P.C. and his best friend, Mackenzie solving mysteries in NY in the early aughts. You know, back when it wasn’t dangerous, but it hadn’t gone through the gentrification. Aka weird city. Or freakazoid as P.C. is fond of saying. Yeah, sometimes the voice is too much like old man trying to be hip, but you suspend your disbelief because it’s fun, and I enjoyed guessing the homages or inspiration behind each.

1. The Lethal Gorilla: This one is most classic Agatha Christie a la Murder on the Orient Express with multiple, multicultural suspects and a crime from the past following the murder victim.
2. Phantom of 86th Street: This was just edged out by the Lethal Gorilla because I found P.C.’s denial of his own issues annoying. But I do appreciate the character growth in dealing with his grief over his mother and how it made this mystery much more personal for him.
3. The Surfing Corpse: A brief trip to the West Coast for sun and surf and murder was cool. The perpetrators of the crime were a real surprise to me, and Zindel showcases a more ambiguous approach to murder mysteries for the lower school set. Instead of a clear black and white, the perpetrators of the crime are simultaneously victims and awful people themselves.
4. The Gourmet Zombie: I found this one very enjoyable yet tragic and showcases some of Zindel’s most creative murders.
5. Square Root of Murder: if you’ve seen The Little Girl Next Door, the murderer should be obvious to you but I think Zindel did a nice job toeing the line of Mackenzie and P.C. missing the signs without making them look like idiots. Gets a lower ranking because of the egregious editing mishap in the middle where the printer printed pages twice.
6. Scream Museum: The first mystery throws you right into it which makes for a fast-paced ride but leaves the readers struggling to catch up who’s who. Like the main suspect Tom, a supposed friend of P.C. and Mackenzie but we don’t get much background on how/why and he never shows up again in the series. So it’s lower than the others
7. E-mail murders: Nothing wrong with this one, honestly, just wasn’t my cup of tea. Anytime they go out of the country, I just found it hard to take seriously.
8. Murder on the Amazon: Sorry, I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief on this one with the kids being invited to babysit a mummy on a Amazon cruise. Even so, the mystery was clever and I liked the homage it did to The Heart of Darkness.