Friends

From School Library Journal
Grade 5-6-Four would-be detectives inflate minor mysteries into major ones, usually with comical consequences, in the first two episodes of this series. In each tale, the quartet acquires a different pint-sized hanger-on. In the first, when a fiercely private teacher's sudden acquisition of a red sports car and a blond wig sets the young sleuths' antennae quivering, a raffish stray dog joins the investigation. Next, Radish stumbles upon a cave containing two moldering toys while wheeling a toddler through some woods. A string of bank robberies in Teacher and a supposed treasure map in Cave add measures of suspense, but both turn out to be irrelevant as, ultimately, the gumshoe wanna-bes' misadventures lead to noisy chaos and red faces but no actual felonies or criminals. It turns out that their teacher is rebounding from a divorce; Radish admits to drawing the map himself and learns along with his fraternal twin Steffi that their father played in the cave as a lonely child. The translation reads stiffly, but the characters are varied enough to create laughs and chemistry. Consider these as lightweight alternatives to Terrance Dicks's "Baker Street Irregulars" or Wendelin Van Draanen's "Sammy Keyes" mysteries (Knopf).
John Peters, New York Public Library
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German

Joachim Friedrich was born in Oberhausen, Germany, where he lives with his wife and two daughters. He has written over a dozen books for children and young adults.