Big Game

Big Game (2015) is the third novel in Stuart Gibbs’s ongoing middle grades series of mysteries set in a Texas wildlife park. Like the previous books in the FunJungle series, Big Game features a preteen would-be detective who finds himself responsible for solving a crime that could put a park animal in danger. The novel is jocular and lighthearted—even though the potential injury to an animal is implied, no violence actually occurs. Instead, the protagonist must navigate unfriendly employees, his crush on a friend, and the unexpected mess that an ape who has figured out how to leave its enclosure can wreak. At the same time, Gibbs inserts interesting tidbits, zoological tidbits, and facts about the vulnerability of endangered animals to poachers into his novel.

Now that it has been some time since Teddy Fitzroy and his family settled into the FunJungle Wild Animal Park, Teddy has started to feel that the nature preserve is a new home. Teddy has been able to help his primatologist mother and wildlife photographer father deal with the darker side of housing rare animals. Even park owner J.J. McCracken finds Teddy impressive ever since the boy figured out who killed Henry the hippo and who stole Kazoo the koala.

As the novel opens, Teddy thinks he has enough on his plate trying to adjust to the fact that McCracken has moved the Fitzroys’ house to the other end of the park in a bid to install rollercoasters. However, this turns out to be small potatoes. One day, Teddy is helping walk the FunJungle elephants when suddenly, a shot rings out across the park. The elephants stampede. Out of control, they wreck a restaurant and a few shops before calming down. The elephant chaos is one thing, but more alarming is the gunshot itself. It seems as though its intended target is Rhonda, the park’s Asian greater one-horned rhinoceros. Not only is the rhino part of an endangered species that poachers kill for their valuable horns, but Rhonda is pregnant.



Park employees rally to do whatever is necessary to protect the vulnerable rhino and her baby. It’s not entirely clear what measures they should take, however—the park had already stepped up security when the gun went off. Just before the incident, Athmani, a wildlife security specialist, had been worried that Rhonda would be a target of poachers. Now that someone is after her, Athmani is sure that someone is after the rhino’s horn—a high-priced black-market commodity—and convinces McCracken to remove all the rhinos’ horns in order to dissuade anyone from attacking them.

McCracken enlists Teddy to help find the mysterious attacker. There is something a little underhanded about McCracken’s dealings with Teddy—the owner asks the boy not to tell his parents about his detective work. Still, for the first time, instead of sneaking around the park to investigate, Teddy gets to ask questions and find evidence in the open with the help of Summer McCracken, the owner’s daughter. Though he is concerned about Rhonda, he is excited to once again work alongside his crush.

Meanwhile, the park is facing a different nuisance. Someone has been ransacking the park’s candy shop and ice cream counter. At last count, the thief has made off with 20 pounds of candy and 16 pounds of ice cream. Teddy finds himself in hot water when Marge, a park employee who really has it out for him, accuses him of being responsible. She has no interest in Teddy’s own theory about the candy caper—that the park’s highly intelligent orangutan, Pancake, has figured out how to escape his enclosure and has found his way to the delicious treats.



Teddy and Summer work out several aspects of the shooting: how someone could have gotten into the park with a gun, where that person would have hidden in relation to the rhino’s enclosure, and what possible motive other than poaching there could have been. They run across several red herrings, including the idea that the shooter is a woman—a theory based on some blurry security camera footage that shows the shooter as a person with a ponytail.

In the novel’s climax, Teddy figures that Athmani is responsible for the shooting. He and head of security Hondo, a huge man who hates animals, planned the whole thing. First, Athmani scared the park owner into cutting off the rhinos’ horns by setting off a remote shotgun near Rhonda. He used a remote so that he could have a plausible alibi of having been elsewhere when the gun went off. Athmani set up the shot in a wig that made it look like the perpetrator was a woman. Then, Hondo stole the horns in order to sell them on the black market for an enormous amount of money.

Teddy manages to foil Hondo and Athmani’s attempt to get away by getting the elephants to stampede one more time. One of the huge beasts knocks the men out cold long enough for Teddy to recover the horns and for the police to arrive to haul the thieves to jail.