Griff Carver, Hallway Patrol by Jim Krieg

Griff Carver is a legend in school law enforcement, but he was expelled from his old school for going too far in the name of justice.  Now he’s at Rampart Middle School, a school that is perfect on the surface, but seething with crime underneath.  Griff is not a rookie.  He can sense littering out of the corner of his eye, nabbing the principal of the school on his first day on patrol.  Griff finds himself partnered with Tommy, a Camp Scout, who is unable to see past the thin veneer of respectability at his school.  Instead, Tommy accuses Griff of being the bad guy, resulting him getting him kicked off of Patrol Squad.  That won’t be enough to get Griff to stop seeking out the real bad guy who is running a fake hallpass scheme.

Tongue-in-cheek and riotously funny, this book takes the crime genre and sets it in middle school.  Fans of crime fiction and crime programs will love seeing some of the favorite tropes of the genre played with.  The lingo Griff uses is dead on, adding to the humor of the book.  The pairing of the veteran Griff with the naive Tommy is also directly out of the genre.  Adding to the feel is the use of recorded statements and Patrol Squad reports to form the storyline. 

The setting here is humorously drawn as well.  The middle school is depicted not in lengthy descriptions but through the eyes of hall patrol.  I especially enjoyed No Man’s Land, the area on the school grounds where the erasers are cleaned, forming a permanent fog of dust.  What could be more perfect for the genre than a meeting in the fog?

A great summer read, this book will have middle school readers laughing out loud, engaged with both the humor and the action itself.  Appropriate for ages 10-13.

Reviewed from copy received from Razor Bill.