It’s not easy being a kid detective.

You can’t make a citizen’s arrest, you can’t beat up the villains, you can’t interrogate suspects. The usual cozy mystery detective’s posse of police, doctor, lawyer won’t talk to you unless they’re your parent. And you can’t even track bad guys if it’s after your bedtime.

When the bad guys catch, gag, and tie you up—and they will because they’re bigger, faster, can drive legally, and don’t have to get home in time to finish their homework—there’s only one thing you can do. (Well two things, if you forgot, again, to do one of them before you left home.) You can bang for attention. With surprising frequency, kid sleuths find themselves tied up and often gagged. Nancy Drew did it so often, it’s amazing her non-boyfriend Ned had time for college between rescues.

Of course, kid detectives do have a couple of advantages. The adults in their lives are oddly complacent about having children roam freely, follow criminals, and get into dangerous situations. The kids know a lot more about technology than almost all adults, they’re used to lying to grownups, and—especially if they’re younger siblings—they can sneak and snoop like nobody’s business. Plus, after that whole reveal regarding Santa and the Easter Bunny, they are naturally suspicious of anything adults tell them.

One of the most entertaining additions to my favorite kid detectives is Amanda, Darlene Foster’s heroine of the Amanda Travels series. Please see my review below of Amanda’s newest adventure, Amanda in Ireland.

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BLURB:

Amanda in Ireland: The Body in the Bog (An Amanda Travels Adventure Book 11) by Darlene Foster

Twelve-year-old Amanda Jane Ross is invited to be a bridesmaid for her cousin’s wedding in Ireland! She falls in love with the Emerald Isle the moment she lands in Dublin. The warm, friendly Irish people immediately make her feel at home. Towering castles, ancient graveyards, and the stunning green countryside are filled with fascinating legends, enthralling folktales, and alarming secrets.

Things take a dark turn when disaster strikes. Amanda wonders if there will be a wedding at all. As she joins the search for a missing horse, she stumbles upon a world of screaming banshees, bloody battles, and dangerous peat bogs. The closer she gets to the truth, the more dangerous things become. Will she become another body in the bog?

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MY REVIEW:

5 stars for Amanda in Ireland: The Body in the Bog (An Amanda Travels Adventure Book 8) by Darlene Foster

As I’ve said in earlier reviews of Amanda’s adventures, kid detectives have a long history. From the Bobbsey Twins and basically everything Enid Blyton ever wrote, to Swallows and Amazons, from the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown, and even three young wizards who go away to magic school—young sleuths never cease to capture our imagination.

As I’ve read her globe-trotting adventures over the past eleven (!) books, my favorite by far is Amanda Ross, the twelve-year-old heroine of the Amanda Travels series. But I am so jealous of Amanda! She seems to have zero problems with ditching her parents to jet off to exotic international locales, especially when her tax-accountant mom is in the middle of tax season. There Amanda always has a usefully negligent adult who is content to let her roam a foreign country as she investigates the mysteries she inevitably encounters, while also making sure she has a chance to experience all the local highlights, food, and natural wonders.

Usually Amanda is accompanied by best friend Leah, her boy-crazy bestie sidekick. But this time when she arrives in Ireland, Amanda is on her own. In keeping with the kid detective genre-defining Nancy Drew, the villains are quick to kidnap, threaten, and tie people up. But Leah is still online, the Watson to Amanda’s Sherlock. And interestingly, this seems to bring out a more serious side in both girls, as Leah proves to be the sounding board who lets Amanda work out the identity of the villains. Also new is the sense that the evil isn’t black and white, as we discover that some of those involved in the plot have gray areas of motivation. 

I appreciate that Amanda is far from perfect and she knows it. She hesitates to share the clues she finds with the busy adults around her. She makes mistakes while trying to figure out who is to blame, who to trust, and when to reveal what she’s discovered. She’s brave but not always careful. Like any young teen, Amanda makes bad choices for what she thinks at the time are good reasons.

As Amanda works to save the day, she takes readers on a tour of rural Ireland’s features sure to capture the attention of her pre-teen audience. Who could resist a bog that swallows bodies for thousands of years?

Intrigued by Clonycavan Man, Amanda read that his head and torso had been discovered in 2003. He had a scrunched-up nose and a head of reddish hair in what looked like a Mohawk. The write-up explained that his was the oldest bog body found that included skin, hair, and internal organs, and it was over two thousand years old. Evidence suggested he had been murdered in his early twenties. It also mentioned that he styled his hair with a sort of gel. —Amanda in Ireland

I just can’t recommend this new book highly enough. If you have a preteen in your life, please give them this latest (or any) of the Amanda Travels series. They will come for the adventure, accidentally learn about the world, and leave with a new book bestie who is curious, adventurous, brave, occasionally a klutz, smart, self-rescuing, and always entertaining.

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