Vincent and the Vanishing Pot

Middle-Grade Graphic Novel (Ages 8 to 12)

 

Chef Vincent d’Rhino is the biggest celebrity chef in Rhinoca Bay, a coastal city of anthropomorphic animals where food is performance and reputation is everything. His superpower is his nose. It reads the chemical fingerprint of every spice, every ingredient and every lie, and it has never once been wrong.

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Then the solid-gold trophy of the city’s biggest cooking competition vanishes mid-show, during a twenty-second blackout, and almost nobody knows it is gone. Vincent’s nose kicks in. It kicks in too fast. He accuses an innocent guest chef, and then he has to solve the theft the hard way, on evidence.

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His twin brother, Detective Victor, is methodical, serious and deeply suspicious of spectacle. His best friend Godot is the Dome’s teenage tech wizard, an oxpecker who never says a word and instead lays the physical clues out in a row until the grown-ups catch up. Three investigators, three methods, and two clocks: the competition has to finish on air, and the theft has to stay secret or the whole thing collapses.

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At the centre of it is a figure from Vincent’s past whose connection runs twenty years deep, and whose motive was never the gold.

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A comedy-mystery with real characters, a mystery that plays fair, and a world kids want to come back to. Every clue is on the page before the reveal, and by the second act the reader can catch something Vincent misses.

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Status:  Script complete and revised. Twenty-nine pages finished in full colour, and roughly a third of the book thumbnailed. Dimitri illustrates and colours every page. Vincent stands alone, and Books 2 and 3 are outlined.

Materials:  The complete script and further artwork are available on request.