Locke and Watts – Chapter Book in Development
The Periphery.
Grandmother always said to avoid The Periphery, but I never believed in that hogwash. It was just a story made up to scare little kids. “If you are a bad mouse, you will end up on the other side of The Periphery, where the Big World is, and lose yourself. You’ll become a bilge rat.” -anonymouse
Just out of human vision is the Little Land. Where mice and rats and other small animals live; entire societies of animals just out of our ability to see. Among them is a very boring fellow who dreams of being a Private Detective. But Larry Watt is a very uninspiring mouse.
Larry seeks a partner. Someone to be the face of the Detective Agency of his dreams. He searches in vain until one day, while attending a play, he finds the embodiment of his agency. “Dial M for Mouse” was a very popular murder mystery. The star of the play, Sterling Lockwood, played the whip smart Chief Inspector Cupboard.
What Larry didn’t know was that suave, smart, talented, Sterling Lockwood, was a good actor, but a terrible mouse. Not even capable of boiling water, Sterling could get lost in his own house. But, give him a role to play, with VERY SPECIFIC direction, Lockwood could convince polar bears to buy ice. So, Larry took a gamble and hired Sterling to be the face of the agency, while, in the background, Larry would be the brains of the operation.
Together they solved a string of complicated cases as Locke and Watts; Mouse Detectives.
The Curse of the Pirate Code
One day, at 22 1/8th Bell street in Seattle, Larry’s landlady, the lovely Ms. Hatpin, finds a ripped-out page from a human travel magazine. It is a story about a pirate named The Buzzard. Olivier Levasseur, The Buzzard, was hanged on the island of Bourbon in 1730. But just before he died, he tossed into the crowd a locket. Inside was a code and cryptogram. He exclaimed “Find my treasure, the one who may understand it!” But the locket disappeared. The treasure has never been found.
Ms. Hatpin is certain she knows the whereabouts of the locket. A member of her family has one that she thinks might belong to the dead pirate. But what Ms. Hatpin doesn’t know, is that the locket, since the death of the pirate, has left a path of death and destruction in its wake. And another, competing, detective, a dirty Rat named Marty, has his sights set on finding the cursed treasure and isn’t going to let anyone get in his way.
Follow the clues as Locke, Watts, Hatpin and Marty, trace the code from the streets of 60’s Seattle, to the tropics. IF YOU DARE.
