Reeling from the strange and confusing discoveries of their last adventure, the Hobtown Junior Detective Club is looking forward to Christmas break when two of its Teen Detectives - Brennan and Pauline - are made to attend an extra-credit boarding school called Knotty Pines. After attending their first classes, however, they realize they may have stumbled on their weirdest case yet! It's not just that the Headmaster and the Headmistress are unusually strict, it's that they seem to be controlling the students, transforming them into boneheads and bullies. On the final night of their stay, the boys and girls are paired up to pledge eternal allegiance to the long-dead Lord Hobb - and to each other - in unholy matrimony! Isolated from their fellow sleuths, our intrepid young investigators need to rely on a cast of colourful characters to lift a curse that has plagued the good people of Hobtown for centuries! Bizarre, funny, frightening, and heartwarming, this latest installment of the Hobtown Mystery Stories brings our teens one step closer to uncovering the haunting truth of their funny little east-coast village.

Forbes Alexander's profile page

Kris Bertin is a Halifax-based writer of novels, short stories, graphic novels, and screenplays. His first collection of short stories, Bad Things Happen, won the 2016 Writer's Trust of Canada's Danuta Gleed Award. He is a two-time winner of the Jack Hodgins 'Founders' Award for Short Fiction and his stories have been published in The Walrus, TNQ, The Malahat Review, PRISM International, and many others. Kris Bertin's graphic novel, a surreal mystery story set in a remote east coast village (co-created with artist Alexander Forbes), The Case of the Missing Men, was nominated for a Doug Wright Award. He and his screenwriting partner, Naben Ruthnum, have projects in development at Oddfellows Entertainment. Visit krisbertin.com.

Kris Bertin's profile page

"It's Bertin's confident, idiosyncratic tone and Forbes' small, unnerving, almost Jack Chick–like art that makes this such a weirdly warm-hearted nightmare." - Booklist (Starred Review)
"This debut would be impressive enough as a mere genre exercise - the perceptive insights into the weirdly hermetic lives of both teenagers and small towns alike, then, are almost a bonus." - The Globe and Mail