The Ostrich Conspiracy (Platypus Police Squad #2)

Zengo is back, this time investigating a malfunction at a new amusement park, the Kalamazoo City Dome. His partner O'Malley's daughter was caught at the top of a Ferris wheel when the power went out in the entire park, and this outage spells disaster for the park, as well as the city. The park was a pet project of the Mayor Davis', but the detectives are suspicious as to why much of the work on the park was done by contractors from another city. As they investigate, they find a tangled web of deceit. At the same time, the entrepreneur Pandini is working to bring a film to the city, and has his own plans for investigating the park... and maybe taking over the city government. Ever resourceful, Zengo and O'Malley get to the bottom of the problem, but not without humorous derring-do first.

This doesn't try so hard to have a film noir feel to it, and concentrates more on the detective work. There is a lot of humor in these books! The first book has done better than I hoped with my students, who love funny books that are on the shorter side and are also illustrated. They tend not to be picky about content.