The only thing Bell Park likes more than a mystery is solving it on her own. But when a time-travelling 12-year-old version of herself lands face-down on her rented co-working desk, she'll have no choice but to take the displaced kid detective along on her latest case. Follow the trail of a missing heterosexual on the strange streets of Toronto! Investigate a quirky cast of drag kings, chicken wing enthusiasts, and women in elaborate cat make-up! Thrill in the pervasive ennui of your early twenties! Struggle to remember where your preteen self was at with the whole being gay thing! Will Adult Bell make peace with the figurative and literal ghosts of her past? Can Kid Bell navigate the uncanny world of the 2020s and find her way back home? How's the chicken in that creepy basement food court? These questions and more will be answered in THE GROWN-UP DETECTIVE AGENCY.
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Bell Park is in her early 20s. She is a private detective and she's struggling to make ends meet. She just broke things off with her girlfriend in a sort of self-loathing fueled impulse. And she's just been given a case from her childhood crush/first heartbreak Cassidy.
Together, they solve crime.
It just works. The core gimmick of Bell maneuvering an emotionally weird case while trying to wrangle her younger self is just a great avenue for comedy AND emotional drama. It captures a general odd clash of managing gender and sexuality in your 20s vs being a kid and just wanting to understand your base attractions. It works!
The mystery itself isn't very complicated and also not that interesting, but its sort of that way by design. The lives of the heterosexuals you're investigating are just so much dumber and more straight-forward than you could possibly imagine. Investigating their shit just exposes how shallow the pool really is. At the same time, it also acts as a good awakening for both Bell Parks. The world doesn't have to be as complicated as it is in their heads. Little Bell's initial rejection of what Adult Bell represents is gradually eroded with the realization that this taboo she's afraid of can be fulfilling and happy in a way she couldn't imagine. Adult Bell, wracked with self-doubt and overthinking things, can finally recognize how simplistic the answers to things can be. The one complicating things is ultimately just herself. And that's freeing too.
Its a coming of age story in so many nuanced ways. And it just works.