Nolan Fitch paid three dollars for a board game at a church rummage sale. By the end of the day, two people are dead, a very tired detective in a trench coat is asking him invasive questions, and the game he can't stop touching turns out to be evidence in a twenty-year-old criminal conspiracy.
It should have been an ordinary afternoon. Nolan and his three best friends are playing Berry Breakout, a cheerfully illustrated board game about cartoon fruit fleeing cartoon disasters, in the middle of a quiet street called Berry Road. Then a runaway grocery cart flattens a fruit stand exactly the way the game's hazard cards predict. Then it happens again. Detective Byrd, a giant yellow bird in a trench coat with the exhausted air of someone who has seen far too much, wants to know why a discontinued toy keeps turning up at the scene of the crime.
What follows is one very long day involving a washed-up talking horse with a drinking problem, a stuffed dog with strong opinions about legal representation, a beloved cookie mascot with a much darker resume, a heavily armed three-foot-tall private investigator, and a former courtroom-themed action figure who is not nearly as retired as everyone assumed. Somewhere underneath the cheerful packaging of a nineties toy line is a ledger that a lot of powerful, formerly beloved people would prefer stayed buried, along with everyone who has ever come close to finding it.
THE BERRY BREAKOUT MURDERS is a fast, funny, deadpan mystery for anyone who has ever wondered what happened to the mascots of their childhood, and whether the answer might involve organized crime. Told in rapid-fire dialogue with a body count that escalates exactly as fast as the jokes, it's a comedic thriller about friendship, nostalgia, and the true cost of a really good board game.
