Charlotte Grote: Solver

“Reading Charlotte Grote: Solver made me smile and reviewing it made me think. Blending comedy and energy, it’s a thoroughly relatable, empowering read – Charlotte is brilliantly witty and bright, which you can grasp from the first page itself. For young people in the city, the book reaffirms the power of a support system and that between life stages, it’s okay to take time to figure things out! You don’t need to see the whole staircase, just the first step.” – Aarya, 21

By John Allison

Scary Go Round Books 

Since winning the prestigious Teen Detective of the Year award, nothing has gone right for Charlotte Grote. Like many child stars, she peaked too soon, failed to deliver on her promise, and quit the game with no roadmap for what to do next. Now, post-school, she is drifting like a pro.

So it falls to best friend, Claire Little, and increasingly involved freelance careers adviser, Glenn Durgan, to steady the ship. Together, they must find a suitable use for Charlotte’s formidable mystery-solving brain, before her directionless meddling gets her in all sorts of trouble.

For more fantastic graphic novels like Solver visit Page45 Bookshop!

 

About the Author

Based near Leeds, John Allison is the creator of, among others, the comic series Giant Days, Bad Machinery and Steeple. In addition, he created the webcomics Bobbins and Scary Go Round, with his work appearing online since 1998. He was one of the first comic artists to build a daily following exclusively on the internet. His current web series, Solver, has been serialised at badmachinery.com since 2022.

John’s comics have been nominated for multiple Eisner Awards (winning twice in 2019), and in 2018 he won the Best Long-Form Online Comic award from the US National Cartoonists’ Society. His work has been translated around the world, with Giant Days currently being published in eight foreign language editions.

His latest series is The Great British Bump-Off: Kill Or Be Quilt, a collaboration with Giant Days artist Max Sarin, for Dark Horse.

 

“It’s an honour and a genuine thrill to have Solver picked for Big City Reads. I did everything on this book myself, from writing and drawing to designing and publishing it, and I hope it will inspire people who pick it up to have a go at doing the same. If not, then I hope at least that they will enjoy spending time with my characters. For me, a good book is also a good friend.”
  – John Allison, author of Charlotte Grote: Solver

 

To find out more about Big City Reads, click here.

 

If you enjoyed Charlotte Grove: Solver, or are just curious about the processes behind creating and publishing a graphic novel, why not come along to our In Conversation with John Allison event on Wednesday 5th August? Tickets are Pay What You Can!

 



Big City Reads 2026

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