This book was never meant to exist. No one needs to know the details. Just know this: there's a Merry, a Larry, a missing tooth, and a teachers' strike that is crippling Timmy Failure s academic future. Worst of all, Timmy is banned from detective work. It's a conspiracy of buffoons. He recorded everything in his private notebook, but then the manuscript was stolen. If this book gets out, he will be grounded for life. Or maybe longer. And will Timmy's...

Resolving to earn so much money that his mother will no longer stress out over the bills, eleven-year-old Timmy Failure launches a detective business with a lazy polar bear partner named Total but finds their enterprise "Total Failure, Inc." challenged by a college-bound spy and a four-foot-tall girl whom Timmy refuses to acknowledge.

"Timmy Failure is not just any detective-he is the greatest detective in his town, perhaps the nation. He is so famous that there have been seven books written about his life. Plus a movie. And so he has agreed to provide the world with his extraordinary origin story, as dictated to his biographer and best friend, Charles "Rollo" Tookus. New York Times best-selling author Stephan Pastis is back with the hilariously heartwarming tale of how it all...