Sabotage Stage Left (Howard Wallace, P.I. #3) by Casey Lyall
Summary: Spring (musical) fever has hit the Grantleyville Middle School Drama Club! Since Ivy Mason is busy with the production, she decides to take a break from sleuthing, while Howard Wallace keeps things running smoothly with their detective agency. Then, just a few weeks before showtime, suspicious things start happening backstage: missing costumes, damaged props, and too many other mishaps to be coincidental. Ivy calls in Howard and their crew to take on the case. Howard tries to lay low and quietly sniff out the perp, but he’s soon brought into the spotlight when he’s framed as the saboteur! Can the team of intrepid P.I.s clear Howard’s name and catch the culprit before the curtain falls on the big show?
Howard Wallace, P.I. has learned a thing or two in his adventures: how to run investigations on the down low, how to put the pressure on the bad guys when it counts, and when to trust his partner. Howard’s loyalty to his friends, but especially Ivy, is his most endearing trait, even when it gets him into the most exasperating situations. After all, for Howard, if things didn’t go wrong they wouldn’t go any way at all. In this adventure, Howard faces the challenges of leadership as Wallace and Mason Investigations works with a host of new associates to solve a graffiti mystery and figure out who is sabotaging the school play. Howard’s inimitable old-man-in-a-tween-body voice provides the hook and the laughs, but it’s the heartfelt relationships that will keep readers coming back for more. Watching these middle school gumshoes in action is a sheer delight.
SABOTAGE STAGE LEFT is out now.
Kathy MacMillan 