The Case Of The Dirty Clue

Third-Grade Detectives #7

by George E. Stanley, Salvatore Murdocca (Illustrator)

Misty's younger brother left her brand-new bike in the middle of the street, and a speeding car ran over it. Not only is the bike totally mangled, it's covered with ugly red dirt.

Misty wants to find the driver, but she doesn't have much information to go on-all she noticed was that the car was white. The Third-Grade detectives agree to help, but there are an awful lot of white cars around town. Can the detectives clean up the case?

Genres: Mystery, Chapter Books, Childrens

67 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2003

About the author

George Edward Stanley was born in Memphis, Texas on July 15, 1942. He received a bachelor's degree in 1965 and a master's degree in 1967 from Texas Tech University. He earned his Doctor Litterarum in African Linguistics in 1974 from the University of Port Elizabeth in South Africa. He lived all over Europe and Africa, studying and teaching foreign languages, working for the U.S. government, and writing books for young people and adults. He started writing fiction while a Fulbright professor in Chad, Central Africa, where about the only diversion he found available was listening to the BBC on his short wave radio. That led to his writing radio plays for a program called World Service Short Story. Three of his plays were eventually produced. After writing and publishing over 200 short stories in American, British, Irish, and South African magazines and linguistics articles in major international journals, he started writing books. He wrote over 100 fiction and non-fiction books for young people including The Katie Lynn Cookie Company series and the Adam Sharp series. He also wrote under the pseudonyms of M. T. Coffin, Franklin W. Dixon, Laura Lee Hope, Carolyn Keene, Adam Mills, and Stuart Symons. He was a professor of African and Middle-Eastern languages and linguistics in the department of foreign languages at Cameron University. He died from a ruptured aneurysm on February 7, 2011 at the age of 68.

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Third-Grade Detective books are geared toward elementary-aged readers, so at less than 100 pages, the mystery and solution are figured out rather quickly. With this being the 7th book in the series, I am loving seeing how my elementary-aged kids are starting to pick up on the importance of paying attention to seemingly mundane information at the beginning of the story, because (especially in books this short), it’s a big part of the solution! This book is about dirt and how, like cobwebs, fingerprints, and sand, it is unique and provides crucial clues to seemingly unsolvable cases.

[Dylan Gorbold · Rating 2 out of 5]

Grades:2-4
Genre: Mystery
One unique feature about this book was the teamwork theme woven into the story.

[Dolly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the seventh book in the Third-Grade Detectives series by George E. Stanley and Sal Murdocca. Our oldest began reading the books in this series independently, but we've read a few of them together and our youngest likes them, too.

We really enjoy learning about and solving the different kinds of puzzles. And I love that we learn about a new kind of puzzle in each book, and as in this case, we often see different ways to use the code. We read this book together and had fun solving the clues together. The solution to the mystery was a bit predictable (at least for me), but our girls were somewhat surprised.

Overall, I thought this was an interesting story and we will certainly look for more books in this series at our local library.

[RLL52013_NicoleHill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Little brothers can be so annoying! Especially when they leave your brand new bike in the road and when you go to put it away you find this dirty bike in its place. This is what happened to Misty. With the help of the other Third Grade Detectives, Misty uses clues to discover who ran over her bike. This is a great book for children making the transition from picture books to chapter books. The language is simple, there are occasional pictures, and it is a realistic mystery that can engage young readers.

[Hillvan]

580L