Something's Afowl, er, Afoul! Homer on the Case by Henry Cole

Homer on the Case (Peachtree Publishing, 2021) <

". . . Expressive black-and-white pencil illustrations, rendered in panels evoking newspaper comics, heighten drama, tension, and humor,” says Publishers Weekly.

The Zebra Box Mystery! Meet the Crew at the Zoo (Mystery on Zoo Lane Series #1) by Patricia Reilly Giff

The plane roared to a stop. Luke's throat burned. He told himself he was too old to cry.

"You'll love this place, Luke," said Dad. "With the new Zoo!"

Luke tried to nod. If only they were back with Abuelo, his grandfather, at the zoo in Florida.

Dad is so proud of his new job as a zoo physician in New York City that Luke doesn't want to let him know how unhappy he is with their move. His little sister Benita seems excited, but Luke's heart drops when they drive up in front of a row of rather shabby houses with the zoo right behind them. Their old house was nicer, and since Abuela was also a zoo doctor and Luke had a lot of good friends back in Florida, Luke can't see anything better here for him.

The next morning Dad rushes him out to the zoo, telling him a new black spider monkey was going to be born soon, and Luke trails along to the Baby Zoo House. On the way in, Luke notices a door that says STAY OUT. He starts to ask about the door, just as his dad calls him to see the baby spider monkey. On the way out he meets a lady cleaning the ponds who tells him about how anteaters use their long snouts for snorkels and tells her to call her Nana-Next-Door. On the way back home Luke spots a boy sweeping the walkway. Both of them see a striped box partly under a bush and reach for it at the same time.

They rolled in the path.

"Hey!" cried Luke. The boy yelled "hey," too! Were the kids terrible here?

WRONG!

"Sorry!" The boy let go of the box.

"Are you the new kid?" He didn't wait for an answer. "I'm the old kid. I've always lived here. Let's see what's in the box!"

Inside is a little green collar, Luke's favorite color, and a dollar bill with a note saying it was for lunch the first week. Just as the boys are puzzling over the contents of the stripped box, a girl named Tori comes by. It's not hers, she says. Mitchell tells Luke it may belong to a kid named Alex.

"He never stops talking," he warns Luke.

And Luke soon runs into Alex, who claims the box might be his. But when Alex can't describe what was in his box, Luke keeps walking, leaving Alex going on and on about how hard his whole name is to spell! Mitchell was right about Alex, Luke thinks.

Later that day Luke meets another kid, Omar, working with his dad in the Blue Zoo Stand. Omar points out the waste basket with lots of blue striped food boxes in it and says he is missing one of the boxes, too, but he has no idea what he put in it. A blue cookie? A pen? That solves the question of where the unusual box came from, but Luke feels no closer to solve the mystery of what is in the box. Still, he has managed to meet all the kids in the row of houses beside the zoo, except Tori's brother Ken. But Ken tells him he found his box, and Tori notices some faint writing on one side of the mystery box.

"SEE DAD!" it says.

And Dad takes him back to the Baby Zoo House and opens the door with the STAY OUT sign, and now Luke knows who the small collar is for!

All's well that ends with new puppies for Luke and for Benita. It's mystery solved, in two-time Newbery Award-winning author Patricia Reilly Giff's first book in her new beginner novels series, Meet the Crew at the Zoo (Mysteries on Zoo Lane) (Holiday House, 2020). The author of the top-selling Kids of the Polk Street School mysteries, Giff's return to the early chapter book genre will be well received, and with engaging illustrations by Abby Carter, a group of diverse characters, and a setting just right for intriguing mystery adventures, this one will be welcomed by young readers transitioning from picture books to chapter books.

A Terrible Time on the Nile Express: The Express Train to Trouble (A Miss Mallard Mystery) by Robert Quackenbush

At breakfast on the luxurious Nile Express, chaos broke out in the dining car.

The world-famous ducktective, Miss Mallard, could not believe her eyes.

Vinegar in Sir Reginald Baldpate's tea caused him to choke. A trick dribble glass spoiled Lady Teal's diamond-adorned frock, and a slap on the back sent Professor Bafflehead's spectacles flying, as the perennial prankster George Ruddy Duck made his way down the dining car aisle.

Not one to miss an opportunity, Miss Mallard quickly offered Sir Reginald a glass of water and took a seat at the table opposite him.

"I've been so anxious to talk to you. I saw you come aboard with your recent discovery, the Tut-n-Quacken mummy case.

All that gold!"

But not even the noted interrogator Miss Mallard could get any details out of Sir Reginald. His answer to all her questions was "Quite!" Then Miss Mallard asked him about the newspaper story that he had been injured in East Africa.

"What happened?" she asked.

Sir Reginald said, "Tigers chased me," and abruptly got up, leaving his cane behind.

Hmmm. Tigers? And when the annoying prankster George Ruddy Duck was discovered missing the next morning, Miss Mallard was called on to save the reputation of the posh Nile Express and find the missing, if not missed, prankster. Is George Ruddy Duck a dead duck? Has someone purloined the Tut-n-Quacken mummy case?

All the clues are there for the illustrious spinster sleuth, Miss Mallard and young detective readers to solve the case, in Robert Quackenbush's Express Train to Trouble: A Miss Mallard Mystery (QUIX) (Aladdin Books), in this clever take-off on Agatha Christie's classic Miss Marple mysteries, right down to the magnifying glass, flashlight, the versatile knitting needles, and, of course, chocolates, in her ever-present reticule in this beginning chapter book for primary readers who love sleuthing stories.

Miss Mallard seems to be perpetually pursued by problems on various conveyances for the enjoyment of young mystery fans in Quackenbush's other Miss Mallard mysteries, such as Cable Car to Catastrophe: A Miss Mallard Mystery (QUIX), Taxi to Intrigue: A Miss Mallard Mystery (QUIX) and Gondola to Danger: A Miss Mallard Mystery (QUIX), to name a few.

And for young fans of hard-boiled gumshoes, Robert Quackenbush is also the noted author of the Detective Mole series, a great launching pad to the middle reader's favorite, Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective.

Sleuthing the Swedish Palace: Nate the Great Saves the King of Sweden by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat

I, Nate the Great, am a Detective. Sometimes I solve strange cases.

Especially for Rosamund. But not this summer.

Rosamund is in Scandinavia.

Or that's what I thought, until I looked in my mailbox.

In his mailbox is a very strange postcard--in which Rosamund says she has lost something with a long nose and that Nate must solve the case or she will call the King of Sweden to solve it for her.

Nate has not a clue. He doesn't know what Rosamund lost or where or when she lost it. He feels sorry for the poor King of Sweden. He tries eating some pancakes to help him think. And he decides to interrogate Rosamund's friends.

Annie reports that she was there while Rosamund was packing and that she put mice toys for her cats carefully on opposite sides of her suitcase. She also gives Nate a photo of Rosamund in a gift shop with a tee-shirt that says NORWAY LOVES ROSAMUND. Nate examines the photo with his magnifying glass and spots some tiny long-nosed Norwegian troll dolls on a display rack beside her. AHA!

Now Nate has a clue. He thinks she bought toy trolls at the gift shop.

Nate makes a quick trip to the library to do some research on trolls. He learns that they have long noses and wild hair and like to hide in dark places like under bridges.

Next Nate interrogates Rosamund's friend Esmeralda. She shows him a photo from Rosamund in the Swedish palace, holding something with long dark hair.

TROLLS HAVE LONG, DARK HAIR!

Now he thinks he knows what she lost and when she lost it. Nate eats a few more pancakes to help him think while he watches his dog Sludge looking for a bone he's buried in the front yard. AHA!

What if Rosamund didn't lose the troll?

What if she put it some place and forgot it?

Nate the Great has solved his first international case, and when Rosamund returns, he can tell her precisely where to look in her suitcase for the missing trolls, in Marjorie Weinman Sharmat's Nate the Great Saves the King of Sweden (Dell Yearling Books), illustrated in the trademark style of artist Marc Simont. Young beginning readers will love to follow Nate the Great's investigations and try deduce where the trolls can be found along with their favorite sleuth. Says Publishers Weekly,"Loose, humorous chalk and watercolor spots help turn this beginning reader into a page-turner.”

Another Perspective:Notorious by Gordon Korman

"It's amazing how everything seems different when you look at it from another prospective."

If anyone ever had a different perspective suddenly imposed on him, it's Keenan. From an exiting life as globe-trotting expatriate with his mom and step-dad, Keenan suddenly finds himself ill with an acute case of tuberculosis, removed from friends, school, his Shanghai high-rise apartment a free-run of the city to recover with his dad on an oddball island in the middle of the St. Clair river, which boasts only a lighthouse set smackdab on the border between Canada and the U.S.

Forget Shanghai, where Mom and Klaus teach at an international school. My dad made a huge stink that I had to come back to the States for my treatment. So here I am, shivering with a low-grade fever under a blanket in his backyard, staring at Canada.

I can't even watch TV, because Dr. Sobel wants me outside in the fresh air. Lifting a paper clip takes all the energy I've got.

But Keenan's boredom is broken by a surprise visitor, a girl who crawls out of the bushes with a too-cute cocker spaniel and starts interrogating him. She says her parents, "a couple of old nerds", named her Zarabeth for someone on Star Trek but he can call her ZeeBee. Keenan's not sure he wants to call her anything, but at least a talk with her and her spaniel Barney Two are, at their worst a break in his boredom. And talk is what ZeeBee does, as she tells him all about the island, "the gangster capital of North America," famous for nefarious Prohibition-era gangsters of the 1920s who lived there--Al Capone, of course, and and Machine-Gun Ferguson, famous for successfully hiding a fortune in gold bars on the island. Zeebee even confides that the house she lives in was once the mansion of Machine-Gun himself and that she is 100% convinced that a gang of gold hunters is surveilling their house and stalking her family.

"I'm 100% convinced that ZeeBee is a certified nutcase."

Keenan is really more interested in ZeeBee's sweet and devoted dog, whom she seems to hate, and she explains that her real dog, the original Barney, was despised by the entire island for his misdeeds and was murdered, a crime she is dead set on exposing.

However, as Keenan recovers, he finds himself a sidekick in ZeeBee's case, joining her in sleuthing out the many citizens whose property her late bad dog Barnie has destroyed to pin his murder on them. But when one night when Zee's family is out, they return to find their house "tossed" (as her Canadian border officer father terms it), and Keenan realizes that Zarabeth has been right all along--that there must be a gang of crooks still hoping to find Machine-Gun Ferguson's treasure trove. And cleaning up her living room, the two discover the key to a map of the island, on which, when placed just so in the room, a beam of sunlight points to the site of Machine-Gun's golden hoard.

It's quite an absorbing detective tale of purloined gold, canine assassination, and ruthless treasure seekers confronted in the dead of night in Gordon Korman's comedic middle-school sleuth story, Notorious (Balzer and Bray, 2020), in which the veteran author offers a satisfying tale of friendships made and lost and made again in a fireworks-filled cliff-hanger, a story fittingly written for a main character split from his old life and an island divided by an international border.

"In the end, what's a border, really? A white line some guy painted long ago. Big deal."

Gprdam Korman is a slick writer in the best sense of the term, one who consistently turns out polished middle-school novels that are simultaneously funny and yet meaningful. He is also the author of the top-selling Schooled, The Unteachables, Ungifted, and Masterminds.

Says School Library Journal"... "A diverting read full of suspense and historical intrigue.”

Lion Down on the Job! Agent Lion by David Soman and Jacky Davis

The phone rang.

It was Ms. Chief from headquarters. "Agent Lion!" she said.

"Ms. Flamingo's cat, Fluffy, is missing!

And it's up to you to find him.

Agent Lion puts aside his toy cars, er, work, and hops on his red bike. He goes straight (with a few diversions for popcorn, donuts, pizza, a carousel and a circus) to Ms. Flamingo's apartment, where he interrogates the lady of the house, inspects the fridge for traces of jelly donuts, and requests a detailed description of the missing person. Ms. Flamingo is irate as she waves a photo of Fluffy in front of him.

"HE IS A CAT!" SHE SAYS.

Agent Lion checks the roof, where he ascertains that the resident pigeon is not a cat in disguise. He checks out the cake Mr. Wombat is baking and promises to inspect the finished product when it comes out of the oven.

Agent Lion is suspicious about an apartment that is too quiet so he bangs on the door, waking the sweet sleeping hippo twin babies. Now the apartment is no longer QUIET! To escape the noise, Agent Lion goes down to inspect the lobby and the mail room, where he skims the new issue of Jelly Donut Digest. Then he reports to Ms. Flamingo, still searching for her cat.

"Agent Lion, I've had enough! I'm going home for a cup of tea!"

Agent Lion accepts her polite offer of a cup of tea, and while he's waiting on her couch, he hears a suspicious sound emanating from among the sofa pillows.

"PURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR..."

It's case closed and time for tea and some slices of Mr. Wombat's oven-fresh cake, in David Soman's and Jacky Davis' newest, Agent Lion (Harper, 2020). In their happily silly spoof of the bumbling gumshoe, whose "mane" search seems to be for jelly donuts, Agent Lion stumbles upon the solution to the missing feline case. Artist Davis provides the perfect black line water color illustrations which provide the humor in her portrayal of Ms. Flamingo's growing impatience with Lion's mainly gustatory investigation.

Jacky Davis and David Soman are the co-creators of the popular Ladybug Girl and sequels, as well as other notable picture books done on their own.

Not What It Seems! The Thief Knot: A Greenglass House Story by Kate Milford

Marzana and Nialla are dissatisfied. Desperate for some excitement, they had lurked at a sidewalk table with their coffees, surveilling what they earnestly hoped was a robbery about to take place inside the jewelry store. Instead, it appeared to be the purchase of a surprise engagement ring for a happy young couple.

So the guy had looked a bit shifty. A high percentage of who lived within the city-within-the-city of Nagspeake called the Liberty were shifty--or had been to one degree or another in a previous life," thought Marzana.

"I should have known it was nothing...because... we live in the Liberty, and this is the place where nothing happens."

The neighborhood of the Liberty should be an intriguing environment, being the sanctuary city of former seafaring smugglers. And when talk spreads of the kidnapping of ten-year-old Peony Hyde, and Marzana's sometimes investigator parents receive a copy of the ransom note delivered by the mysterious Emmett, who brought up the possible involvement of someone called "Snakebird," Marzana seizes on solving the case as her remedy for ennui. With Nialla as co-sleuth, she organizes a group to help in their investigations, even calling their friend Milo, resident of the peculiar Greenglass House, where they had been previously involved in a puzzling Christmas enigma, for advice.

Marzana and Nialla recruit fans of fantasy fiction from Lucky's bookstore--Emilia, privy to many secrets of their school's historic building, Ciro, a self-declared born camoufleur, J. J., a magician, and Milo's offering, Meddie, a sometimes visible ghost resident at Greenglass House whose talents including invisibility, walking through walls, and supernatural sight and hearing. When the crew of six discover that their substitute math teacher is the great nephew of Andrew Cormorant, called "the Snakebird," they suspect that the kidnapped Peony may be hidden at the apartment of their real math teacher and indeed they find a little girl chained there--one who turns out to be a counterfeit Peony Hyde, whose real name is, interestingly, Tasha Cormorant.

Now, as Sherlock would say, "The case is afoot!" Marzana's crew, self-named the Thief Knot, discover an undercover conductor on the mostly abandoned Nagspeake subway system, the Belowground, who takes the young sleuths to a nightmarish abandoned station, overgrown with the ornamental ironwork which infests the Liberty, overgrowing buildings, walkways, and especially subway tunnels, where the real kidnap victim is perhaps to be found.

With a plot with as many convolutions as the enchanted ironwork of The Liberty, Kate Milford's forthcoming third book in series, The Thief Knot: A Greenglass House Story (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020), nothing or no one is quite what it seems in a place where time and setting overlay each other. Like the Harry Potter series, the plot draws on the strengths of the young friends to solve a puzzle with many pieces, a band of unlikely mates--differently-abled in abilities, knowledge, and exceptional powers, but one in loyalty.

This is no quick-read Nancy Drew mystery, but one to be taken slowly, savored for its atmosphere, its murky clues, and shifting plot. In the Liberty, the haven for old secrets, Marzana not only helps solve the mystery of the missing student, but also some of the mysteries of her own parents' hidden histories. Milford's over-arching theme of connection, the links between people, places, and their joint history, provides a part-fantasy/mystery tale perfect for middle readers who like to solve puzzles that range from relationships to crimes of the past.

Previous books in this series are Greenglass House (read review here) and sequel Ghosts of Greenglass House (read review here).

Race Case: The Lost Race Car by Misti Kenison

Jayden is watching two rather unusual figures flying at colorful kite in his own front yard. What he is not watching is his new toy rolling away! It's a red racer with #15 on its side. Suddenly Jayden notices it is missing!

Forgetting their kite in flight, Detective Fox and Goat are quickly on the case. Fox squints through his telescope and Goat goes into disguise in his dark glasses. Then they spot a car zooming through the garden. Is that the lost car?

NO. THAT POLICE CAR IS WHITE.

That can't be right.

A mighty gray motorcycle roars by. But race cars have four wheels. A cycle has only two. Detective Fox centers his attention on a toy cement mixer on the kitchen counter. Detective Goat ogles the mixer and pronounces it too weighty. A yellow school bus is too long to be a racer. A red and blue toy train travels across the bridge, but it rolls on tracks. Race cars prefer roads. Detective Goat's spyglass spots a red toy vehicle in the backyard, but the tractor is way too tall to be a racer.

Hey! WAIT! What does Jayden's big brother Jordan have it his hand? It's small, it's red, it has four wheels!! Congratulations, Detective Fox and Goat! Case closed.

Some sharp-eyed junior sleuths may well have spotted the lost race car long before the dynamic detective duo do, in Misti Kenison's The Lost Race Car: A Fox and Goat Mystery (Fox and Goat Mysteries) (Schiffer Publishing, 2018). Would-be detectives will want to add the salient qualities of various rolling toys shown in Keniston's appendix to their own detective notebooks--color, size, weight, and number of wheels are all clues to solving this case, and some junior gumshoes may have fun making up their own missing vehicle quiz, such as what's white and light? What's long and yellow and has four wheels? What has lots of cars and runs on tracks? Elementary, my dear Watson!

The Nose Knows! The Detective Dog by Julia Donaldson

Known as Detective Dog, Nell uses her fantastic sense of smell to sniff out the truth.

Who left the poo on the new gravel path?
How did the spider get into the bath?

With a wag of her tail
Nell the detective was hot on the trail.

Nell's sleuthing skills are kept busy by her person, Peter (who could have been neater), who needs Nell to find all the things he misplaces--one shoe in the tool shed, the book left under cover in bed, even the ball that bounced into the toilet. But on Mondays, Nell leaves her detecting duties behind and goes to school with Peter. There, she is the reading dog, who sits with the youngsters just learning to read.

Books about princes who turned into frogs,
Books about dragons--and books about dogs.

Nell loves the unforgettable smell of books, but on one Monday morning, that sweet scent is missing. In fact, so are all the books from the classroom shelves! It's a mystery, but Nell sniffs out a clue. There's a cap left behind by the robber, and Nell's nose knows what to do. Following his scent, she leads the teacher and class through the winding streets of the village and the fields nearby. Ignoring the bodacious odor of rabbits in the meadow, Nell tracks down the culprit.

Sniff, sniff, sniff! Peter cried "Look!"

For there sat a man with his nose in a book.

Surrounded by sacks of the children's looted volumes, the culprit is quite contrite. He claims he only meant to borrow them till tomorrow. At the word "borrow," Nell perks up her ears. She knows just the place for a rehabilitated book crook--the public library, where he can borrow any book.

It's another case closed for Nell in Julia Donaldson's winsome The Detective Dog (Henry Holt and Company, 2018 (First Am. ed.) Julia Donaldson's way with rhyme, rhythm, and meter gives her narration a bounce and verve that makes this one irresistible for youngsters, and artist Sara Ogilvie's splendidly flowing illustrations of her lovely canine crime hound at work have comic touches, as when Peter's kind classmates retrieve the ball and scarf Peter has misplaced along the way. A joyous book in praise of both dogs and reading, and what could be better?

Author Julia Donaldson is also the author of many beloved rhyming tales, such as The Gruffalo and the Halloween classic, Room on the Broom, (See two different reviews of two editions of this one here).

Cold Case! Mission Defrostable (Lady Pancake and Sir French Toast) by Josh Funk

Down in the gloomiest nook of the fridge,
past Veggie Valley and Rosemary Ridge,
meeting in secret behind Pickle Post,
sat Lady Pancake beside Sir FrenchToast.

Something sinister is afoot in the fridge.

There is a mysterious chill in the atmosphere. Lady Pancake's carefully-curled coiffure looks as if she's had it frosted. Sir French Toast's wig is icy. Is the compressor out of control? The thermometer miscalibrated?

The coolest sleuths in the kitchen are called to take the case!

Agent Asparagus flashed an I.D.

You're the two heroes that I've come to see!

Before their home turns into the new Ice Age, Sir French Toast and Lady Pancake have a mission--to stop the glaciation before it turns all the fresh food in the fridge into popsicles. There's only one place to look for the cold-blooded crook--in the FREEZER! But before they can venture into that icy realm, there is one more carb character they need to recruit--the cold and calculating frozen Baron von Waffle.

Pancake explained what they needed to do.

"You know the freezer. We're lost without you!"

Will crusty old Baron von Waffle join in their mission to save the green veggies in the crisper from becoming frozen forever? Will the real sub-zero perpetrator be unmasked as the daring pair stalk the cold-hearted villain in the upper realms of refrigeration?

Or will this episode turn out to be the foodie version of Frozen?

In a plot that might have been penned by author Agatha Frostie herself, there's a warm ending in store for the two starchy sleuths in a delicious denouement in which the Peach Boys come out of retirement for a spot of surfing the shelves in a gatefold that reveals a COOL (but not too cool) celebration of calibrated refrigeration. It's the latest spoof of the mystery detective genre by the always chill Josh Funk. In his third in series, Mission Defrostable (Lady Pancake and Sir French Toast) (Sterling Books, 2018), Funk's artist sidekick (and partner in crime) Brendan Kearney provides the animated and anthropomorphized foodstuffs in his usual lively pastel illustrations.

Serve this one up with a warm cup of cocoa, along with more of the refrigerator investigator genre in Lady Pancake and Sir French Toast and The Case of the Stinky Stench (Lady Pancake and Sir French Toast) (see review here).

The Nose Knows: The Case of the Stinky Stench by Josh Funk

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark!"

Wait! Wrong story.

"UNCLE," SAID CROISSANT, "THE FRIDGE IS IN TROUBLE!
A HORRIBLE STENCH TURNED THE WHOLE SHELF TO RUBBLE."

Those formerly feuding foods, Lady Pancake and Sir French Toast, come together when they discover that the jewel of their kitchen--the fridge--is besieged by a noisome smell, something malodorous which threatens the whole larder. Immediately they turn to their best hope, the savory and savvy French sleuth, Inspector Croissant.

"IT'S BARON VON WAFFLE, THAT DEVIOUS SQUARE,"
SAID PANCAKE WITH ANGER. "LET'S LOOK IN HIS LAIR!"

But the bad-guy Baron von Waffle,--always a smart Alec--proves again to be fresh, and the three forge forth, past foodstuffs of all sorts. The fridge seems to be the province of a culinary couple of both exotic and eclectic tastes, prolific with carbs and veggies alike. Over Salsa Ravine and up Mount Everbean they go. Inspector Croissant trips over Miss Steak, but they soldier on, Something is definitely fishy here. Could that reek be a Red Herring?

INSPECTOR CROISSANT TOOK A MIGHTY BIG WHIFF.
"THE ODOR IS COMING FROM CASSEROLE CLIFF."

At last Croissant tries to pin the rap on the usual suspect, Fruitcake, but Fruitcake resists arrest with a tart old maxim aimed to keep him out of jail!

"EVERYONE KNOWS FRUITCAKES NEVER GO STALE!"

For those foodies who don't find puns noxious, the appropriately named author Josh Funk's The Case of the Stinky Stench (Lady Pancake and Sir French Toast) (Sterling Books, 2017) is a tasty sequel to his earlier carbohydrate-loading tale, Lady Pancake and Sir French Toast, ably assisted by his sous chef, artist Brendan Kearney. As anyone with a halfway working kitchen knows, a sortie into the depths of the fridge can be a hazardous investigation, but Funk keeps the story lightly seasoned with tasteful humor and juicy rhyming couplets. This story is certainly more fun than cleaning out a refrigerator! Says Kirkus Reviews, "The confident storyline marries complex vocabulary with an easy syncopation and reaches a surprising level of drama when the stench is revealed.

You Can Count On It! 7 Ate 9 byTara Lazar

I was dozing in my chair when an urgent bang on my door bolted me awake. It was 6.

"7 is coming to get me," said 6. As a private I, I am used to his type--numbers. They are always stuck in a problem. I knew this 7 fella. He was odd.

"What's 7 up to?" I asked.

"My days are numbered!" said 6. "Word on the street is that 7 ate 9, and now he's after me!"

"Technically, he's always after you." I said.

But all puns aside, Al F. Bet, Private I, promises to get down to the root of the case, where he soon runs into a number of complications. 9 indeed seems to be nowhere, cancelled out of the equation, so to speak. Al scours the street for 8, hoping she's got some data for him, but she claims to know nothing, nada, zilch, zero, despite the fact that she and 9 are known to be very close. But the news seems to frighten her.

"Then I'm next in line!" 8 said. In a flash she took off her belt.

Now 8 looked just like 0. Good disguise.

The detective ducks into the local diner for a piece of pi with ice cream on top, hoping to get a scoop. He asks the wisecracking waitress, B, whether she's seen the missing 9.

"Negative!" said B.

The clues just don't add up, and our ace private I figures he's got to find the missing 9 or prove he's been eliminated. But there's something about 6's story that doesn't quite seem to be on the up-and-up, in the just published 7 Ate 9 (Disney Hyperion Press, 2017), in which author Tara Lazar fashions a hoary old number riddle into a smart, stylish picture book while mining the tropes of the 1930s detective story and firing off punny gags like gunfire from a gang of Mafia goombahs.

Sometimes to solve the problem, you just have to invert something, and when Private I Bet spots 6 acting suspiciously he figures that 6 is actually 9, hiding in plain sight upside down, and the case is solved.

While technically a number recognition book, this one takes its wordplay into higher math (see the diner's dessert case with the sign PIECE OF PI, $3.14.) Lazar's numerically-savvy text is added by a #1 sidekick, artist Ross MacDonald, whose pencil, watercolor, and digital retro metro scenes and numerical characters add visual jokes.

A quantity of sight gags add up to a punny, funny tale that's Number One on the giggle-o-meter. Although the publisher recommends this one for preschool and Kindergarten children, the best jokes will likely score with savvy second and third graders who will get the clever numerical puns and gladly groan along to the final solution. Says School Library Journal, "An A-1 purchase for those who love play on words, mysteries, and humorous tales."

Missing Horn Mystery: The Jazzman's Trumpet (A Kit Mystery) by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel

"And now, ladies and gentlemen," said the announcer, "the moment you've all been waiting for. The King Jazz Hour will announce the winner of the free concert tickets...right after a word from our sponsor, Sudso Soap."

"Another commercial? I just want the waiting to be over!" Kit exclaimed.

The announcer's voice returned. "Okay, folks, we've picked a postcard at random for the lucky winner who will win two front-row tickets to Swingin' Slim Simpson's one-night show at the Burns Theater right here in Cincinnati Saturday night. So without further ado, the name of our winning listener is...

Miss Kit Kittredge!

Like most folks in 1934, twelve-year-old Kit is swing jazz crazy. So is her dad, and when he tells her that he remembers Slim Simpson, the famous bandleader, from his high school days right there in Cincinnati, girl reporter Kit suddenly has an idea. Perhaps there's an article for the Cincinnati newspaper in this for her to write. Perhaps she can wrangle an interview with the jazzman through Mrs. Burns, the owner of the theater for whom Kit had already solved the mystery of her stolen cashbox. Kit quizzes her dad for information about the famous trumpeter and his band, and prepares her pitch for a story with the news editor. Gibb thinks it sounds like a good story about a big event and a local guy who's made the big time in jazz and gives her some clippings from the newspaper's "morgue," the file of earlier stories for background information.

After school the next day, with her notebook and well-sharpened pencil, Kit heads down to Burn's Theater and discovers something disturbing. The big glass display case at the front of the theater has been smashed and the promotional poster for the concert has been torn up and tossed on the sidewalk. Mrs. Burns is dismayed at the broken case, but agrees to help Kit meet Swingin' Sam Simpson and some other musicians and arrange an interview for the following afternoon. But then they discover that a strange message has appeared on the marquee out front:

GET OUT SLIM--OR ELSE!

It look like somebody wants Swingin' Slim's show to be a flop. But Kit's interview with Slim goes well, and with her background information and some great quotes from the star about swing jazz, Kit has high hopes that her by-line article will be good enough to run in the metro news section of the Sunday paper. But when she returns to the theater, something has happened that may mean there will be no concert at all by Swingin' Slim Simpson.

Hootie Shay, the baritone sax player, was barreling up the aisle at full speed. "Did you see anyone go through that lobby?" he asked Kit sharply.

"I...no, I didn't," Kit said.

"Darn!" said Hootie, wringing his hands. "Sorry, kid, but we're in the middle of a situation here. Somebody got into the theater and got into the greenroom while Slim went for an interview.

Somebody stole Slim's trumpet!"

It looks like Kit Kittredge is going to be wearing both her girl detective and girl reporter hats in Elizabeth Cody Kimmel's The Jazzman's Trumpet: A Kit Mystery (American Girl Beforever Mysteries) (American Girl, 2016). It's up to her to solve the theater mystery and find Slim's one-of-a-kind trumpet to save the show and her article. The show must go on, and the resourceful Depression-era heroine of the Kit Kittredge series is on it, in this installment in the spin-off Kit Mysteries series.

There are plenty of unexpected twists and turns and some sidekick sleuthing with her friend Stirling and some unexpected help from her mysterious new friend Trixie in a detective story set engagingly in the early 1930s swing music scene. Author Kimmel adds an appendix "Inside Kit's World," which brings young readers up to speed on the Depression days when the big bands ruled the radio and great horn players were becoming media stars. For fans of all the American Girl mysteries and particularly those who are fans of swing dancing, this one is the cat's whiskers.

The Kit Kittredge series, begun by author Valerie Tripp with Meet Kit: An American Girl, 1934 (American Girl), introduces middle readers to the period of the first year of the Great Depression, when Kit's father loses his job and heads west to find work while her mother turns their comfortable two-story home into a boarding house, Kit pitches in with her newspaper route, and the parlor radio is the main source of entertainment. Middle readers get the sense of a time different from their own, a time of great change, and get to know a resilient and adventurous character who manages to adapt to her own time.

Detecting and Inspecting: Double Trouble in Bugland by William Kotzwinkle

"Well," said Toe-Biter, as I say, I'd had a nip or two and I suddenly got an impulse to visit my old friend Angus Earwig. I went up to his room over a horsefly stable--nothing fancy about Angus--and knocked. There wasn't any answer, so I opened the door. There was Angus stretched out on the floor and the Vampire going out the window."

"My, my," said the landlady, inching closer to listen.

Toe-Biter continued. "It was a terrible shock. But far more terrible was the sight of that cloaked figure hurrying toward the open window. It was all in black velvet, and the collar of its cloak was high to hide its face. It twisted toward me, and I saw--its face. The leering, awful grin it had, Inspector Mantis, that face seemed as old as time, as if it had lived forever on the blood of the innocent."

Inspector Mantis and his loyal assistant Dr. Hopper are happy to escape their lodgings, occupied as they are by the vigorous spring cleaning of their landlady, Mrs. Inchworm, taking on a case that leads them to the quaint village of East Gum Leaf, the scene of the ghastly crime. There Mantis' trusty magnifying glass helps him spot a glittery blue insect part which is their only clue to the identity of the exotic killer.

And for the cerebral Inspector Mantis, "the game is afoot!" (all six of them!)

A visit to Professor Channing Booklouse's prodigious library of partly-chewed books reveal the identify of the intruder, the exotic vampire moth, to Inspector Mantis, and after a curious stop at an exotic perfume shop, Mantis meets back with Dr. Hopper and Toe-Biter, both of whom agree with great reluctance to disguise themselves as a lady vampire moth, whose redolent perfume flushes out the suspected perpetrator. Believing he has at last found his lost love, the Vampire flies the disguised two, Dr. Hopper carried on Toe-Biter's shoulders, back to his ruined castle, where amid the bled-out husks of the blood-sucker's prey, Inspector Mantis waits, armed and determined, for the final showdown with the evil vampire moth.

So begins the first episode of the brainy Inspector Mantis and his doughty assistant, Dr. Hopper, "The Case of the Lonely Vampire" in William Kotzwinkle's Double Trouble in Bugland (David R.Godine, 2016), "profusely illustrated by Joe Servello," in another humorous and clever parody of the beloved cases of Sherlock and his flatmate and assistant Dr. Watson.

Kotzwinkle's cast of creepy-crawly Victorian characters offer many sly witticisms couched in understated English wit which will appeal to the more sophisticated middle and young adult readers who are fond followers of the Arthur Conan Doyle canon. This new edition offers three other cases, filled with wickedly delightful arthropodian take-offs on the Holmesian casebooks, with juicy jokes and original plots that will delight fans of Kotzwinkle's first book, Trouble in Bugland: A Collection of Inspector Mantis Mysteries (Godine Storyteller) (read review here).

The Fall of the House of Wax: Wax by Gina Damico

The town of Paraffin smelled of wax.

It smelled of Citrus Dreams, Tahiti Sunsets, The Night before Christmas, New Car Leather.... Spice and musk and tea and rum. Love and home and peace and America. The town of Paraffin smelled of everything. At the same time.

Each scent layered on top of the other, mixing, fusing and swelling into an odorous abomination.

Other than that, Paraffin was a lovely place to live.

And Poppy Paladino, chief nerd of the theater nerd clique at Paraffin High, has reason to believe that something is rotten in the quaint town of Paraffin.

A picture-perfect Vermont town, Paraffin is nevertheless the fiefdom of the aptly surnamed Chandler family, Anita and Preston, heirs of the century-old Grosholtz Candle Works, a mecca for school field trips and foliage-seeking sightseers, a snare for senior citizen tour buses and the source of products for thousands of scented candle stores in malls everywhere.

The too spooky-perfect Chandlers, sleek jet-setters who rule the town with their perfectly manicured hands, are set to preside over their BiScentennial Celebration, when Poppy and her best friend Jill decide to cash in their celebratory coupons at the candle store which fronts the castle-shaped waxworks. Wandering away from the crowded sales floor, Poppy ventures down the labyrinthine halls and meets up with a very strange old woman, Madame Grosholtz, who confides that she is the spiritual daughter of Madame Tussaud herself and leads Poppy to a warehouse of hollow molded wax figures, all bearing an uncanny resemblance to local townspeople. Madam Grosholtz gives her a special candle and hints that it will reveal something for Poppy's eyes only as it burns. The eerie sight of  a  wax likeness of Smitty, the donut shop owner, and Mrs. Goodwin, her neighbor, remind Poppy of the old-timey horror story of the "hollow people" who escape from the candle works from time to time

Poppycock, thinks Poppy, as she drives Jill home. But when she parks her car at her house, a figure of a teenaged boy pops out of her trunk, fully grown but as innocent and unschooled as a baby. Poppy passes him off as Dud, an exchange student from Tristan d' Cunha assigned to board with them, to her parents. But then she notices his skin is never warm or cool, always room temperature, and a flickering flame can be seen in his throat. He's a ... Hollow, but a seemingly benign one.

But then Poppy begins to notice that there's something strange about Mr. Lincoln, her principal, and then even Mr. Crawford, the dreamboat biology teacher for whom she's long had a crush. And then Smitty at the doughnut shop seems to have an abnormal fear of spilled hot coffee, and soon Poppy realizes that one by one, the people of Paraffin are being replaced by Hollows, wax Stepford Wife-ish clones of themselves. Written beneath the wax of Mdm. Grosholtz' ever-burning candle she learns that the Chandlers are themselves wax clones of their nineteenth-century selves, living in replaceable wax molds which they have compelled the imprisoned Madame Grosholtz to carve for them as they age. And somehow these living Hollows are scheming to destroy the real people of Paraffin, replacing them one by one with their own "living" wax figures. Poppy confides her discovery to Jill and recruits her fellow theater people, the Giddy Committee, to help with her plan to stop the deadly Chandlers before they and all their families are turned to wax.

And then Poppy discovers something terrifying.

Poppy ignored Jill, keeping her eyes on Greg, as she rammed her elbow into the light switch. The room went dark.

Poppy kept her focus squarely on Greg's mouth, expecting a lot of flickering going on in that throat of his.

Nothing. No light in his mouth.

But in the corner of her eye, two small flickering points of light remained.

One in Dud's mouth.

And one in Jill's.

Jill herself a Hollow.

Is the plan already blown, or can Poppy foil the Hollow Jill, and perhaps save her real best friend from the Chandler's deadly Potion?

Gina Damico's forthcoming Wax (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016) features a sort of Return-of-the-Body-Snatchers-cum-Madame-Tussaud's plotline. Pleasantly creepy, with a properly improbable premise, but with a little willing suspension of belief, what a glow Damico gets going as her plot heats up to the melting point. Poppy is an irrepressibly perky teen heroine with smarts and spunk and a touch of snark in this humorous and offbeat take on a Revenge of the Theater Nerds story. Fans of the tongue-in-cheek horror novel genre will warm to this waxily wacky tall tale of small-town terror.

Damico is also the author of the popular Croak series.

Read All About It! Isabel Feeney, Star Reporter by Beth Fantaskey

"Isabel," Miss Giddings said--still sounding worried. "You just be careful out here. Then she glanced down the street. "I've got to run now. Izzy. Take care, okay?"

"Yeah, you, too," I said. That was when I realized a man was waiting for her down the street in the shadows, his hat pulled low. They were obviously arguing, and the man was rough with her as they walked into the darkness. I bent to pick up my newspapers. The winter wind, as strong as it was, couldn't drown out the sound of a gunshot. A single, sharp report that echoed from the alley into which Miss Giddings and that man had just disappeared.

I probably shouldn't have run toward a gunshot, but Miss Giddings always looked after me, if only by buying a paper she probably didn't even want, and I couldn't seem to stop my feet, flying toward the alley.

Chicago Tribune newspaper girl Isabel Feeney is the sort of girl who runs toward adventure, and when she rounds the corner into the alley, she finds her favorite customer Miss Giddings bent over a bleeding man, a gun beside her on the concrete alleyway, looking dazed and speechless. A police car screeches to a halt in front of the alley, and two cops rushed toward them.

"I'm Detective James Culhane," he barked. He looked at me and and Miss Giddings, pointed to the weapon lying in the snow and asked point-blank, "So, which of you fired the gun?"

Isabel Feeney, a ten-year-old truant and newspaper girl, supplementing her mother's scant earnings as a night janitress, finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation, with the pretty and stylish clerk Miss Giddings the chief suspect. Under questioning at the police station, Isabel has to admit that the man and her friend seemed to be quarreling, and Miss Giddings is held, pending an arraignment.

Isabel just knows her friend is not a murderess, even though she becomes a prisoner on Chicago's famous "murderesses' row," and when she read the Tribune's headliner written by star female report Maude Collier, Izzy sets out to set the reporter straight on Miss Giddings' innocence. Miss Collier is sympathetic to her story, but explains that she writes her crime stories based on the existing evidence. Isabel realizes that it's up to her to set the story straight and write it as it happened--when she has all the evidence--that is.

And Isabel Feeney is on her way, sniffing out the evidence behind the shooting of Charles Bessemer, a known gangster, with a prissy, bossy diva of a daughter, Flora, the star of the Bakery Pride Bread commercials and billboards and wannabe movie star. Izzy investigates the crime scene, proving herself a real gumshoe, discovering two bits of evidence the police ignored, snowy footprints outside a door in the alley that go nowhere, and a smelly piece of chewed Pepsin gum in the snow, and a memorable investigative crime reporter is born.

And investigate Isabel does, with the help of Maude Collier, Miss Giddings' crippled son Robert, and even the snooty Flora, who knows more about her father's gangster world than anyone. Izzy finds herself attending the gangster's funeral, crawling through a broken window at midnight to check out what's behind that alley door and even chased down that same alley and knocked out by someone bent on foiling her sleuthing, and at last turning star witness at Miss Giddings' trial.

Isabel is part Nancy Drew, part the orphaned Annie, and an altogether delightful character, in Beth Fantaskey's newest novel, Isabel Feeney, Star Reporter (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016).

Fantaskey is a writer who can spin a fascinating yarn with the best of them, and in her newest, she takes two of the cliches of pop lit, the girl sleuth with plenty of smarts and the plucky girl reporter going for a above-the-fold lead story, and runs with it. As you would expect, Isabel Feeney takes to both roles tenaciously, with a deliciously written first-person account of 1920s-era cops and robbers and strong female figures making their way among them.

Set in a cold and windy Chicago in the days when Al Capone was its de facto mayor, Isabel's voice is likewise breezy, savvy, and brassy in a way that fits her time and place, right at home in the merrily melodramatic cast of jazz age characters that Fantaskey digs up. Short chapters and shifting action keep the story moving to the beat of the city, swirling like the snow around Isabel as she hustles between leads in her case. Middle readers will willingly follow Isabel Feeney down any dark alley to get the story, and no doubt will be rooting for more Izzy stories from this talented storyteller.

"Isabel's innocence and intelligence combine to form a complex character full of moxie," says Booklist in its starred review.