Sam Hastings and her friends have decided to start a detective agency, but they’re a little short on clients. Actually, to be exact, nobody at all is interested in hiring a group of twelve-year-olds for important detective work. So, when Sam and her friends happen to be eyewitnesses to a crime at the Perceval Museum, they can’t let the perfect opportunity to prove themselves slip by. In no time at all Sam, Bert, and Kennedy have fully entrenched themselves in the case of the missing codpiece. Things spiral out of control, as these things so often do, and pretty soon the Albatross Investigative Agency is tracking bears, escaping burly teens, and getting mixed up in a kidnapping. Everywhere the Albatross Investigators go they hear whispers about the mysterious Mad Amemasu, but they seem to get further and further from unmasking this shady criminal. Rifts form, frustrations grow, and before she can stop it from happening, Bert has quit the agency and Sam is left alone to manage a serious business … in serious trouble.
Quarter Finalist
Assessment:
Plot: This quirky, charming YA novel opens with three twelve-year-old self-styled private detectives looking for Charles the Fifth’s codpiece, which has been stolen from their local Perceval Town Museum—what could be better? Samantha, Bert, and Kennedy established the Albatross Investigative Agency over the summer and stepped in to take on the missing codpiece case because so far no one has wanted to hire them to investigate graffiti, embezzlement, nasty rumors, or anything else. The kids take statements from everyone and in the best Poirot style reveal the name of the thief, which, given the clues, many readers will also have figured out. And of course, one case leads to another.
Prose/Style: The writing is crisp and often includes understated humor that middle schoolers will appreciate. This is prose that does its job without drawing attention to itself.
Originality: The characters are original, engaging, and most importantly, interesting, a feature that characters in other YA novels often lack. The plot of each case is carefully constructed so that the reader learns everything needed to solve it without the clues being obvious. Serious Business on Albatross Lane is a wonderful addition to the genre that cleverly references its predecessors in both the YA and adult canon of mystery stories.
Character Development/Execution: The characters are wonderfully idiosyncratic and Smith deftly reveals a little more about each as the story progresses.
Blurb: Wonderfully inventive, challenging mysteries and a cast of three slightly odd but eminently likable twelve-year-old’s will bring even the most reluctant middle school reader to the library to check out Serious Business on Albatross Lane.
Date Submitted: August 26, 2021
