User blog:Bluecake/Thoughts on "Jo Hammet, Kid Detective, Solves the Great Jewel Robbery"

After reading the short story "Jo Hammet, Kid Detective, Solves the Great Jewel Robbery", I have a lot of thoughts on it. I guess this could be considered a review of sorts, but it's probably going to be much more disorganized than a review should be. Here's my thoughts:

First, I really appreciate that the story exists at all. It might seem like a silly thing to mention, but JumpStart 5th Grade is a pretty self-contained game. Aside from the main character Jo Hammet appearing in some later JumpStart games, like the SpyMasters series and Adventure Challenge, most of the locations and characters from JumpStart 5th Grade didn't carry over to any other media. It was really nice to see something that actually tried to draw inspiration from that game.

The story is also nicely paced, in my opinion, and while there weren't any particularly surprising twists and turns, I appreciated the fact that it was trying to tell a mystery story, and that it showed the characters (particularly Jo) making observations and using deductive reasoning. Even though the mystery is pretty simple, I don't feel like it talked down to its audience too much, and it does a good job of establishing certain characters or clues early on, and providing a bit of foreshadowing here and there.

That being said, there were definitely some issues I had with it. The biggest one for me is this: I don't think this story matches the tone of JumpStart 5th Grade. The story is actually really down to earth, it's pretty much just an ordinary jewelry robbery with ordinary people. I tend to like realistic fiction, but then I thought about how JumpStart 5th Grade has a lot of odd things in it - a talking lab rat, telepathic octopuses, and an evil scientist with purple skin. There's a lot of stuff that just couldn't happen in real life, but I think that really adds a level of intrigue to the game. This story, on the other hand, has absolutely no sci-fi elements in it whatsoever, or even anything that unusual. It doesn't make the story boring, it just...doesn't really feel like it takes place in the same universe as the game did.

The other big issue I have with the story is that none of the characters are that memorable. All of the characters that were created for the story feel like they were just made to fill a certain role. There's Alfie Gargle, who just feels like every generic bully character. There's Mrs. Green, who's just there to be someone that Jo helps. The most disappointing character is the villain. He's called the "Hotel Bandit" after he robbed a bunch of people at a hotel of their jewelry at gunpoint, but he barely does anything it the story. His grandson Alfie, who basically acts like his minion, has way more to do in the story than him. The "Hotel Bandit" only interacts with Jo once, and all he does is have a conversation with her, then at the end of the story, he's arrested. Talk about anti-climatic.

On top of that, I don't even think the characterizations of the returning characters (Jo and Bernie) are that strong either. They're alright, but they lack a lot of the smart dialogue, wit, and charm that their game depictions had. Jo also feels a little less mature in this story. At the beginning, she's grumbling to herself about walking a dog because she's "the world's greatest kid detective" and it's "a waste of her talent". That felt out of place to me. In JumpStart 5th Grade, Jo really strikes me as a laid-back person. At the beginning of the game, she's just enjoying hanging out an art museum, when suddenly she finds herself caught up in a mystery after witnessing someone being kidnapped. She's the type of person who wouldn't be able to resist investigating a problem once she was involved, but that's different than being bored and complaining when there are no mysteries to solve. I also don't think Jo would refer to herself as "world's greatest kid detective", she's clearly more modest than that in the game. On the other hand, I don't think the story portrays her as self-absorbed, she's plenty willing to ask for help when she knows she needs it, and gives credit to the people who helped her at the end of story. Her portrayal here isn't bad, but it felt more reminiscent of her later depictions in Adventure Challenge and the SpyMasters games, rather than the cool laid-back Jo from the JumpStart 5th Grade.

Overall, while I had issues with the story, I think it made for a decent enough small mystery story - definitely not as big or exciting as JumpStart 5th Grade's story, but it probably wasn't intended to be in the first place. It's just an example of an "ordinary mystery" that Jo might encounter on a normal day. And for something like that, it's pretty decent.