Dog Show Detective (Penelope Love, Lothian, $15.99 pb, ISBN 9780734410092, October) ****

School holidays are just beginning and Tiff has made plans. Her plans include a trip to the Royal Show with her best friend C Y and multiple rides on the Tower of Death roller coaster. Tiff’s plans do not include going to the Show with her Aunt Wilma—big, bossy and booming—and Aunt Wilma’s prize-winning pomeranian, Muffin. Unfortunately for Tiff, nothing can withstand her mum’s Glare Force 10 and Tiff is off to the show with Muffin and Aunt Wilma. This lively and very enjoyable middle reader is the best I have read recently. It is perfectly placed for eight to 11-year-olds who are not quite ready for a full-length novel. The plot is sufficiently complex to hold the reader’s interest and the characters are very nicely developed. Best of all, it is believable in both tone and plot line. The dialogue is spot on and the characters are three dimensional. It is an excellent read.

Liz Reily is a former bookseller and now works for the Australian Booksellers Association

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2007, Thorpe-Bowker