Tired of child slueths too good to be true? Then open a Sammy Keyes mystery and get set for a high topped adventure.

Several years ago I was browsing through an off price store in Flushing, NY. I needed something to suplement my reading while visiting the in-laws. Fortune was on my side that day. I picked up, for $1, an autographed, hardback copy of Sammy Keyes and the Skeleton Man, by Wendelin Van Draanen.

In this book I discovered one of my favorite amateur detectives, Sammy Keyes.

Sammy is not a girly-girl, 7th grade student. She likes to buy her hightop sneakers from the thrift store. Boys are nominally interesting, and her best friend is 72 years old. Sammy secretly lives with her grandmother, while her mother is away in Hollywood attempting be a star.

In her latest mystery, Sammy Keyes and the Psycho Kitty Queen, Sammy is trying to find out who is killing and dumping cats all over town. The middle school drama queen Heather is connected to Sammy in startling ways. In addition Sammy is celebrating her 13th birthday, again.

If you like reading a series from the beginning, you will need to pick up Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief. Thirteen-year-old Sammy's proclivity for telling people exactly what she thinks gets her in trouble when she involves herself in the investigation of a robbery at the "seedy" hotel across the street from the seniors' building where she is living with her grandmother.

In addition to the books there is an online casebook with a mystery to solve.