Agnes Quill: An Anthology Of Mystery

Agnes Quill is the story of a teenage detective, the haunted city she lives in, the strange cases she solves and the ghosts who help, hinder or just plain annoy her. Set in Legerdemain ― a congested, fog-filled, cobblestone-paved Victorian city built around a cemetery the size of Central Park ― Agnes' adventures include confrontations with trapped spirits, cursed souls, possessed relatives, disappearing pets, decapitated scientists, ambitious zombies and a mess of other supernatural oddities.

From Publishers Weekly

Agnes Quill is an odd girl. At the age of 16 she inherits not only her grandfather's estate but his unique ability to speak to the dead. Now all the ghosts in the gothic town of Legerdemain are finding their way to her door—some want a favor, some want revenge, some just want company or a little adventure. In this first anthology of Roman's Web comic, Agnes faces grave robbers, zombies, mad scientists and a few even more bizarre denizens of the underworld. Each story is illustrated by a different artist, giving the anthology a disjointed feel. Ho's craggy lines make the first story undeniably horror; Telgemeier's round and cartoony drawings are more YA. Each artist brings something different to Agnes, but through all of them she is an undeniably charming heroine. An appendix at the end of the anthology hints at a deeper mythology that Roman will hopefully have the chance to explore further in future collections. (Oct.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Agnes Quill is a capable, intelligent, gutsy girl detective with ready access to the spirit world. In this graphic novel, she takes on four weird cases, each one involving something unusual--a severed head, a valuable locket, zombies, and poltergeists. Each story arc is well developed, atmospheric, and rich in plot, and a "field guide" and "Excerpts from the Journals of Agnes Quill" provide narrative discourse on Agnes' powers, ancestry, and familiars. Four different artists contributed the black-and-white images, which vary greatly in style--from Jason Ho's scratchy, angular characters to Raina Telgemeier's gently rounded cartoons, with Dave Roman's dark, cartoony art and Jeff Zornow's detailed, action-packed work falling somewhere in between. Both Agnes and her world become more real for the rich visual variety. Give this to fans of graphic novels as well as to mystery readers. Francisca GoldsmithCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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