Eugene “Huge” Smalls is our kind of kid. He’s small for his age (12) and smart enough to skip a grade at school, but he also has enough anger issues that the world treats him like a tornado just crackling to touch down. His only friend is a stuffed frog named Thrash, and after his grandmother handed him a heap of Chandler and Hammett novels, he fancies himself a noir hero. All he needs is a mystery. It’s his grandmother, Toots, who gives it to him. Someone has defaced the sign in front of her nursing home, defaming the residents. With a US$10 advance, Huge and Thrash begin working the teenage tagging scene in their 1980s Jersey town, trying to smoke out the culprit.

If the premise of Huge, Fuerst’s debut novel, strikes you as too precious, we’d be tempted to unleash Eugene and his hair-trigger temper on you. Fuerst has created a first-rate charmer of a protagonist. Eugene has erected this faulty armour of anger around him, which only points to how deeply he’s aware of his own vulnerability. The mystery, of course, runs deeper than a tagged nursing home sign, something Eugene isn’t prepared for as he digs.

What makes the novel succeed, in the end, is that Fuerst is so dedicated to both of his stories. On the one hand, Huge is a highly entertaining hard-boiled noir, which could just be a cute trick given the protagonist’s age. And working hand-in-hand with that is a funny, insightful and serious coming-of-age novel. Huge might as well be talking for Fuerst when he tells an older kid, “I can back it up.” Jonathan Messinger

Published by Three Rivers