InvestiGators: Ants in Our P.A.N.T.S.

What’s it about?

The story.

Ants in Our P.A.N.T.S. marks the series' first genuine pivot into science_fiction territory: the threat this time is not a criminal organisation but something more absurd and more physical, giant ants, or more precisely the organisation P.A.N.T.S., whose acronym Green deploys with the same gleeful commitment as SUIT and FISH. The disaster_survival engine makes this the most kinetically intense book of the first four: Mango and Brash are inside a catastrophe rather than investigating one, and the giant insect scale gives Beedie's panel art new opportunities for physical comedy. The science_and_curiosity deep theme (0.5) is new to this instalment, something about the ant biology or the P.A.N.T.S. technology invites questions rather than just laughs. The secondary_genre of science_fiction rather than animals reflects a book that has moved from the animal-detective formula into a new register while keeping all the same players. A strong entry point for readers who want the series at its most chaotic; and the book most likely to prompt children to look up ants.