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(More customer reviews)Those Bayonne Bears are back, and there's not a safe muffin in all of New Jersey. "Bad Bear Detectives" is another delicious book in Daniel and Jill Pinkwater's hilarious "Irving and Muktuk" series, and it's one of their funniest. While Daniel Pinkwater specializes in combining the outrageous with the dryly understated (much as James Stevenson does in his stories about Grandpa and Wainey), `Detectives' has some of the funniest lines of all the "Bear" books, and Jill Pinkwater's colorful backgrounds and imaginatively drawn backdrops and bears (the latter are so uncomplicated and sheer white that they seem to leap off the page) engage the reader and convey the slyly innocent, but oh-so-guilty personalities of the muffin-obsessed bears.
When determined Police Captain Hare fingers Irving and Muktuk as the prime suspects in a heist of "expensive Italian designer muffins from the waterfront, the bears take a break from cheating at poker to proclaim their innocence:
"This is bad," Muktuk says, "Make one mistake and anytime a muffin is missing, the coppers are all over you."
It is unfair, "Irving says.
"Of course, we have made more than one mistake," Muktuk says.
Unfortunately, their history of muffin larceny (stretching from Alaska to the Bayonne muffin factory) is so well known that not even the zoo director sides with them, and even offers a punishment: "If it is proven that they took the muffins, they will be locked in their [apartment-like] room at night, and they will have to pick up trash around the zoo for a year."
However, the bears are so convinced of their innocence (or have a huge capacity for denial) that they resolve to "remove the smirch from their names," by stealing detective hats and finding the true culprit. "Isn't it a bad idea, where we are going to prove that we did not steal something, to start out by stealing hats?" Irving asks. In Pinkwater's usual deadpan style, Muktuk replies, "We have no choice...without hats, we would be spotted as polar bears in a second."
There's only one soft spot in the story, some good detective-bad detective interrogation of a watchman that doesn't quite fit, but two pages later Pinkwater returns to prime Irving and Muktuk form: "If you were a bear..." Muktuk says. "I am a bear," Irving says. IF you were a bear, and you took the muffins, what would you do next?" Muktuk asks. "I would eat them!" Muktuk says. With their working theory that bears must have stolen the muffins, Irving and Muktuk have inside knowledge of the muffins' location. They're so familiar with the loot that they pick up the smell of "mirtilli dell'italia, or blueberries of Italy, and--surprise!--the scent of bear! Still hanging onto their excuse that they're after some other muffin-loving bears, Irving and Muktuk lead us back to the Bayonne zoo ( ! ), where they find the muffins behind a waterfall next to the polar bear pool! They're slightly soggy, but good enough to finish off.
"So, it was us! We did take the muffins!" Muktuk says. "Because we are bad bears," Irving says. "Yes, we are, Muktuk says."
And this is a very excellent book. In the Pinkwaters' hands, the bears are clever symbols of young children, so egocentric and single-minded in their hedonistic pursuits that their heartfelt tale of innocence lasts right up to the muffin-eating conclusion. As they eat the last muffin morsels, they know that punishment will follow the crime, but their eyes seem to say that nothing will hold them for long--and nothing ever does. Good for them, and good for all of us, because there's nothing quite as delightful as the blueberry muffin-eating bears of Bayonne.
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