Calendar Mysteries – New Year’s Eve Thieves

Ron Roy's New Year's Eve Thieves is a code-cracking mystery for 5 year olds set on the very last afternoon of the year.

What happens

It's the thirteenth and last Calendar Mysteries book (a bonus one for New Year's Eve). Bradley, Brian, Nate and Lucy have a party to get to at six o'clock. Then they hear that Mrs Wong's laptop was stolen from her house while she was away. Nobody can work out how the thief got in.

Back at Nate's, a face in a dark ski mask suddenly appears at the window. Nate screams. The face vanishes. Two strangers are spotted creeping round the house next door!

So the four friends follow them through snowy Green Lawn. One is tall, in a cowboy hat, with a ponytail and a limp. The other wears the ski mask. They take photos of Ellie's Diner, the pet shop and the bank. They scribble in a notebook. Very suspicious!

The clues are brilliant fun for a young reader. Bradley pulls his own ski hat down over his face to go undercover (it has holes for his eyes and mouth). He spots lipstick under the mask. And both strangers have suntans in the middle of winter.

Best of all, there's a note written in code. Most of the vowels are missing, so the kids fill them in one word at a time, and WLK turns into WALK. Your reader can have a go at cracking it alongside them.

Brian is on top form. He notices that the tall man's limp has swapped legs ("I never forget a limper!"). He's also very quick to decide a sweet old couple must be the thieves in disguise. Nate keeps the jokes coming too.

The face at the window gives a proper jump early on. After that the suspense stays firmly on the giggly side, with snowball fights, party hats and hot chocolate round the fire.

There's a big surprise waiting at the end. We won't spoil it, but it's a very happy way to say goodbye to the series.

What to read next

For a mystery that belongs to the big kids, try The Absent Author. Dink, Josh and Ruth Rose go hunting for a famous writer who never turns up, and the trail leads them to the Shangri-la Hotel and the very solemn Mr Linkletter.