Saturday, 18 November 2006

A Case for G. String, Julia Owen, 2005


A CASE FOR G. STRING Julia Owen, Scholastic, Auckland New Zealand, 2005, 197 pages, paperback, $16.99. ISBN 1-86943-676-8

For obvious reasons Geraldine String, the narrator of this comic teen crime-buster story, prefers to be known as Mickey. While she is delivering her brother’s newspapers (in the hope of bumping into the town’s newly-arrived skate-boarding hunk) Mickey discovers that someone is searching the house of a recently-deceased old lady, Miss Horn. And why has Cupcake, Miss Horn’s savage little dog, disappeared?
Before long a band of amateur detectives are climbing into the empty house and into trouble.Mickey’s cheerful interplay with her oddball pink-haired grandmother, irritating little brother and her friends, Bugs and Erina, keeps the story interesting. The cunning crime never seems particularly plausible, but A Case for G. String provides a painless read, with plenty of younger brother jokes.

Trevor Agnew

First published in The Press, Christchurch, New Zealand on September 3rd 2005

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