More booky goodness

"The Sisters Grimm: The Fairy Tale Detectives" chronicles the lives of two sisters, Daphne and Sabrina Grimm. They had always enjoyed a loving family life with their mother and father, until one day when their parents went out and... never came home again. Although the police searched, they only found the Grimm's car, which was empty save for a small red handprint on the dashboard. The police insisted it wasn't blood, put paint, but still didn't have any other clues to the disappearance of the older Grimms.

The girls were put into foster care, but a succession of truly horrible foster parents have made them less than thrilled with the system. The girl's caseworker thinks they are horrible and impertinent, so when their grandmother offers to take the girls in, she takes them north to the small town of Ferryport Landing, New York. Even though Sabrina, the older sister insists that her father said her grandmother was dead, Mrs. Smirt, the caseworker, will not hear her complaints.

On arriving at the town, they meet their Grandmother Relda. Daphne is all too ready to leap into life with their grandmother, but Sabrina, burned by their time in foster care, is already making plans to escape. There's another problem, in that their Grandmother lives with an old man named Mr. Canis. And that her Grandmother appears to be crazy, talking about Giants and Pixies. Sabrina doesn't want to stay with a crazy woman, but when she tries to leave with her sister, they are attacked by Balls of Light in the yard. Sabrina and Daphne think they are insects, but Relda calls them pixies.

The next morning, Sabrina is even more dismayed when Relda tells them she is having Mr. Canis nail their windows shut so that they cannot open them and let anything in. She also doesn't trust the food their grandmother is giving them, which runs to things like Spaghetti with bright orange sauce, green meatballs, and pancakes with rose-colored syrup. Over breakfast, Relda tells the girls that they are descendants of the Brothers Grimm, and that their stories were not fairytales, but true stories that they set down to keep the truth alive when it seemed that the people and creatures in them would die out. Shortly after the book was published, they got enough money together to bring many of the people they wrote about, called the "Everafters", to a new home far from humans who might kill and persecute them. They brought them to America, where Jacob Grimm purchased acres of land on the Hudson River and let the Everafters settle down. But when humans started coming to America in greater numbers, the Everafters grew worried that the humans would kill them in America as well. They started getting restive and fractious, and culminated in a scheme by Prince Charming to buy up land in a neighboring town to annex his to his holdings. Jacob saw this had to stop and went to Baba Yaga for a spell to keep the Everafters in the town permanently. But he had to pay a price for the magic. A Grimm must also live in the town to keep the spell going. If the last of the Grimms die, the Everafters will be freed from the town.

Shortly after Relda finishes filling the girls in on the History of Ferryport Landing, they are called out to a case of a farmer's house which was destroyed. Although the mayor and his aide, a dwarf called Seven, show up and claim it was nothing more than an accident, Relda believes a Giant actually crushed the house, given that she finds a piece of bean vine that smells of giant in the wreckage. And that's not all... someone filmed it as well. But who could do such a thing?

Sabrina sees the huge footprint but is still not convinced that Relda is sane, or that Giants actually exist, until they track down the giant, who kidnaps Relda and Mr. Canis and walks off with their car in his pocket. The girls meet Puck, King of the Pixies and master troublemaker, and although he insists on calling himself a villain, he goes with them to help find Relda, even though he wants to be the one in charge.

Back at home, they find a letter from Relda, telling them to use her keys to open the room that was locked and she forbade them to enter. Inside, they find the magic mirror once used by Maleficent, the evil stepmother of Snow White. Inside the mirror is a huge space where the Grimms store all the magical implements they have had to take away from Everafters, and the Mirror loans them Ali Baba's carpet to break Jack the Giant-Killer out of jail, as it is obvious that they need help in dealing with the Giant.

Once they break Jack out, he tells them that it is probably the mayor who is responsible for the Giant, as Charming has long wanted to buy up the town and run it as his personal kingdom. The best place to find proof is at the Ball and fundraiser that Charming is running that night. Using magic to diguise themselves as Mama Bear (Sabrina) and the Tim Woodsman (Daphne), they infiltrate the party, and find that many Everafters despise them for keeping them trapped in the town. But not all Everafters feel that way. Snow White, for one.

Sabrina infiltrates the Mayor's office, and discovers the video camera, until Charming discovers her and threatens to kill her unless she tells him who she really is. And when they are interrupted by the giant, they must go in chase of the real villain. But can they deal with the giant and get their granny and Mr. Canis back in one piece?

This was a cute book, and is first in a series. Sabrina, of course, is supposed to be most like the reader, skeptical of fairy tales, and thinking that her grandmother is lacking in sanity. But the best thing about the book is the glimpses we see of what the "Everafters" are doing now. The Three Little Pigs, not so little any more, are now the town sheriff and his deputies. Seven, Charming's Aide, is probably one of the Seven Dwarfs (perhaps Dopey, given the way he is seen wearing a dunce cap reading "I am an idiot" when we first meet him. Or maybe that is only meant to invoke the movie version, as the dwarves in the original story are not distinguished in any way). I am also interested to see that both this series and the "Fables" comics by Bill Willingham depict Jack as someone kind of antiheroish and underhanded. Though I haven't read the fairy tale in a while, I never got that kind of feeling from Jack.

Next up, "The Purrfect Murder" by Rita Mae Brown, a Mrs. Murphy mystery.