The prolific Davenport author and illustrator Jason Platt has completed his second children’s book trilogy.
Paw & Order Vol. 3: The Night of the Comet will debut nationwide on Tuesday, June 23. The book is the third in a new graphic-novel series for young readers ages 7-12 following the adventures of cat and dog crime-solving duo Purrlock and Marlowe and their detective agency, Paw & Order.
Written and illustrated by Platt, the series is published by Papercutz with distribution by Simon & Schuster Distribution Services.
In the new book, pet detectives Marlowe and Purrlock are on the case again after an astronomer takes a tumble during The Night of the Comet--and it turns out this accident might not have been accidental at all. When their nemesis, Meowiearty, asks them for help on the case, Purrlock and Marlowe (well, mostly Purrlock) are suspicious, but soon the facts of the case win them over.
“I wanted to make this series really interactive like a logic puzzle, so readers get multiple chances to carefully review the clues with our main characters before turning the page to solve the mystery,” Platt said. “This way they can go back and look at a suspect in-depth and perhaps identify a new detail they may not have considered the first time they characters interacted.”
In the new tale, Dr. Tortuga (the Spanish word for turtle) breaks out of her shell as a brilliant astronomer, but on the night that should hold the discovery of her career, she instead finds herself in a terrible bicycle accident.
As Purrlock and Marlowe discover, someone's been tampering with her bike! Could it be the doctor's overworked assistant? The disgruntled neighbor? Or the kid who was able to claim discovery of the comet in Dr. Tortuga's place?
“When I first started writing this set of adventures of Purrlock and Marlowe, I wrote with a love I have for both comedy and mysteries,” Platt said recently. “A lot of my own childhood was influenced by both, and I always wanted to write a book that combined the two together. In many ways, I wrote and illustrated Paw & Order for the 7-year-old I used to be. It makes me truly happy knowing that other children love comedy and mysteries too.”
The series also merges two childhood loves – mysteries and art.
“I remember distinctively going straight to the bookstore and looking at all of those blue-spined copies of Hardy Boys and I would usually look at the cover art first, then I would look at the title,” Platt recalled, noting one of his favorite mysteries as a child was Ellen Raskin's “The Westing Game.”
“It was a really great puzzle mystery that made you like at the end of each chapter like, I was thinking, oh my gosh, what's going to happen next?” he said. “And what clues do I have to solve this? It was a really— I remember being on the edge of my seat reading that book.”
He really got into illustrations in grade school and around 5th grade, started a lifelong admiration for artists Norman Rockwell and Drew Struzan, who did posters for the “Star Wars,” “Back to the Future” and Indiana Jones films.
Platt’s first book in the series, Paw & Order Vol. 1: The Grilled Cheese Caper, debuted in August 2025. Recently in March 2026, The Grilled Cheese Caper landed in the top 10 of the Children’s Book Council’s Kids Favorites list for grades 3-5.
According to the Children’s Book Council, each year, thousands of children, teens, teachers, and librarians across 50 states read newly published K-12-grade books and vote for the ones they like best. Over 70 coordinators nationwide display hundreds of publisher-submitted titles in their schools and libraries so that every book can be read and voted on.
“That was a big surprise, and I was just I was really, really honored and kind of taken aback,” Platt said of that top 10 vote. “It just made me feel really good and made me feel happy that these kids enjoyed my book and the story and the characters. It was amazing to get that news.”
The series’ second book, Paw & Order Vol.2: The Case of the Sleeping Artist, was released in October 2025.
Platt is a graduate of The Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) with a degree in illustration. In 2015 he was accepted by unanimous vote into the National Cartoonists Society, the world’s largest and most prestigious organization of professional cartoonists whose elected membership roster includes over 500 of the world’s major cartoonists working in many branches of the profession, including comic books, editorial cartoons, animation, webcomics and other online platforms, newspaper comic strips and panels, gag cartoons, greeting cards, advertising, magazine and book illustration.
Platt also is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.
The pet project after “Middle School”
In addition to Paw & Order, Platt is the author/illustrator of the award-winning middle-grade Middle School Misadventures series, including Middle School Misadventures, Middle School Misadventures: Operation Hat Heist, and Middle School Misadventures: Dance Disaster.
The series has been translated and published worldwide, including in Portugal, Israel, Poland, Amsterdam, Norway, Finland and Turkey.
It’s fairly common for one person to do text and illustrations for children’s books, but not always, Platt said.
“There are people who just want to write and that's all their concentration is on. And then if it's traditionally published, then the publisher will seek out an illustrator that they feel is a fit,” he said. “But it doesn't work out like that all the time. I do know like some— some author-illustrator friends who submitted their piece and they were accepted but only maybe for the writing and the publisher sought out another illustrator. It doesn't happen all the time but it happens every once in a while.”
While both comic books and graphic novels use panels to tell stories, a big difference between the two is a graphic novel is a complete story from start to finish, while a comic book is usually just an episode of an ongoing story, Platt said.
A picture book (like “The Polar Express”) is typically shorter and aimed at younger readers, he noted.
“The artist actually has more time to devote to the style of which they're doing this because a traditional picture book is usually 32 pages long,” Platt said. “So the artist will usually have more time to concentrate on these pages, whereas a graphic novel, you might be having like with Paw & Order, it's 90 pages. So, and within those 90 pages, there might be 4 to 8 panels to a page, so there's a lot more to concentrate on.”
“I think it's just so much fun and so brilliant when especially when you look at like a graphic novel that you're flipping through and you're like, this is just looking— there's so many times when I'm looking at someone else's work and I'm just marveling at their line work or their coloring or their background and it's just what they're able to do,” he said.
As a film buff, Platt for the new book subtly paid tribute to the iconic “E.T.” poster of a bike against the full moon in his cover art, with a broken-up bicycle.
“Constructing the cover, because the victim, Dr. Tortuga, in this adventure, she has a bike accident. She tumbles off of her bike,” he noted. “And when I was designing the cover for this, I was like, oh my gosh, wouldn't it be funny if I added this? I mean, in pure satire of the E.T. moment, absolutely.”
“She's an astronomer and she's making her way down to the observatory to witness this new comet that's entering our solar system. And as she's riding down this hill, her bike falls apart, and so she tumbles,” Platt said. “She breaks every bone in her body. And so her character— and she's fine, she's fine— but her body is completely wrapped in bandages and stuff. And so whenever she talks, she just mumbles.”
One of the lessons in the book is that kids need to work together, even if they may not like each other, the author said.
“You might not like somebody— like Purrlock doesn't like Meowiarty— but it doesn't mean that they're a bad person,” Platt said. “Meowiarty, who's the benefactor for Dr. Tortuga, wants to know what happened. So they go investigate and look at the clues, and then they go and talk to the witnesses or the suspects, one of them being this character named Red Herring.”
Each one of the suspects has a motive and a reason to have caused this accident.
New series since 2023
Platt has been working on the new series since late 2023, and submitted the first book in August 2024. The last “Middle School Misadventures” book came out in 2022.
While he was doing “Middle School Misadventures,” the second two books (“Operation Hat Heist” and “Dance Disaster”) concerned mysteries. In the second, someone steals Newell’s hat, and the last one there’s a school dance that someone is trying to disrupt.
Platt was interested in constructing logic puzzles in his stories.
“I really wanted to do something with animals this time, and I thought it’d be funny to have a cat and dog mystery-solving team,” he said. “A little bit of Scooby Doo in that aspect, but everybody’s an animal.”
The second Paw & Order book – “The Case of the Sleeping Artist” – was coincidentally perfectly timed, to news events, since Platt set it at an unnamed Paris museum. In real life on Oct. 19, 2025, four thieves broke into the Louvre art museum in Paris and made off with royal jewels (valued at $102 million) once worn by France’s queens and empresses.
“They go to Paris and there’s a theft at a museum,” Platt said of his detectives. Marlowe’s Aunt Foo Foo is the artist’s benefactor in Paris. The painting was stolen right after it was revealed, and Aunt Foo Foo was arrested as the main suspect.
The author-illustrator sold his concept as a three-book deal. For the first book, he finished the full script – 10 pages were illustrated in pencil, five of those were inked, and a few of those in color.
The cat Purrlock is named after the iconic detective Sherlock Holmes, and the dog Marlowe recalls famed detective Philip Marlowe (created by Raymond Chandler). Purrlock is more an excitable character, and his arch-nemesis is named Meowiarty, a big, menacing tiger, named in honor of Sherlock’s enemy, Moriarty.
Marlowe is more even-keeled and mellow, Platt said. “He kind of keeps Purrlock in line.” Unlike Holmes and Watson, his detectives are equals and true partners.
The first two books have already been sold in Turkey, to be translated. It would be ideal if the Paris book was translated into French, Platt said.
On the heels of the new book release, Platt will attend the American Library Association’s national conference in Chicago in late June.
“I'm heading up there to sit with my publisher and also sit with the National Cartoonists Society. But it's a really huge deal for all of the librarians all across the country, who come and get to meet the authors and then get to hear about all these new books that are coming out,” he said. “And so it's going to be a really, really fun time.”
Platt doesn’t know what book project may be next for him, but he said he has two children’s book-related proposals out in the world, but could not supply any specifics.
The new 88-page full-color book is available for pre-order in both paperback and hardcover through various retailers, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Hudson Booksellers, Target and Walmart.
For more information, visit the Simon & Schuster website. For more on Platt, click HERE.
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