Young Sherlocks

In a sun-scorched alley of 1920s Los Angeles, the Mystic J.J.J.—a pint-size P. T. Barnum in a newsboy cap—bets his last licorice whip that Ernie Morrison, the ring-leader of the rascally ‘Our Gang’ cadre, is too chicken-hearted to spin anything more than gum-wrapper fibs. Ernie, stung by the taunt, unfurls a fever-dream saga: a velvet-roofed limousine screeches up to the curb, disgorging Betsy Ann Hisle’s silk-stocking heiress, who is instantly snatched by a trio of bowler-hatted kidnappers straight out of a German Expressionist woodcut. Ernie, Gabe Saienz and Mickey Daniels—now self-anointed knights-errant—give chase through trolley-tracks, Chinese-laundry steam and a graveyard of Model-T carcasses, finally storming an abandoned merry-go-round factory where the villains plan to ransom the girl for enough mazuma to buy the very town. In the yarn’s whiplash coda, Ernie imagines Freetown: a kids-only republic carved from river reeds and orange-crate architecture, where ice-cream is legal tender and every citizen is required to swing from a tire at least once an hour. The tall-tale folds back on itself like a Möbius strip: the gang, breathless from applause, discovers their derelict hideout has become the blueprint for the utopia they just invented, leaving J.J.J. to chew his licorice in slack-jawed defeat.