Adam Brody on lost youth, shocking endings, and kid detectives

Heads up, Encyclopedia Brown-heads: The time has come for your dark cinematic adaptation—At least, sort of. In The Kid Detective, Adam Brody plays Abe Applebaum, a Brown-like sleuth who, in his youth, solved more than 200 cases in his Pleasantville-like town, including the case of the missing fundraising lockbox and the case of the kid who lied about practicing with the Mets. After the deeply sad kidnapping of his own teen assistant, though, both Abe and the town slide into a deep depression sparked by a complete loss of innocence. It’s a dark twist, and one that’s reflected as the main conflict of The Kid Detective when a teenager comes to a now-adult Abe in search of the person who killed her boyfriend. As one might expect, there’s more than meets the eye with the kids on the stoop and the prevalence of jingle-jangle type drugs in this town, and only Abe Applebaum can put all the pieces together.

The A.V. Club spoke to Brody about his familiarity with the kid detective genre, as well as whether he relates to the “whatever happened to that kid?” notion surrounding his character. We also talk surprise endings, because in The Kid Detective, viewers really may not know who did it until right up to the very end.