Another sequel is in the offing, and young mystery fans should be glad.
Wallace and Mason Investigations is on the case of the missing mascot.
Noir-obsessed Howard Wallace and down-to-earth Ivy Mason, middle school detectives, catch a new case. Junk-shop owner Marvin, to whom Howard owes many favors, wants his grandnephew Carl’s name cleared. It seems that Carl, who happens to be on Howard’s enemies list (for wedgies past), stands accused of kidnapping his own basketball team’s mascot, Spartacus the pug, and so he’s been suspended from the team. Howard and Ivy take the case, but due to past problems at school, they can’t detect during the week. That stricture is lifted when coach Mr. Williams hires them to find the pug before the big game. Twists turn and turn again, and the detective duo nearly breaks up as they work and surprise themselves by teaming with former enemies. Lyall’s sophomore effort lacks some of the zing of series opener Howard Wallace, P.I. (2016), but mystery fans should enjoy it anyway. It leaps from the tired trope of the stolen mascot to land in new territory, and the characters interact realistically and have real kid problems. It doesn’t have much to do with Shadow of a Doubt, from which it surely draws its name, but the target audience won’t notice. Ethnicity is denoted with naming conventions; the story hews to the white default.
Another sequel is in the offing, and young mystery fans should be glad. (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4549-1955-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
