A to Z Mysteries – The Missing Mummy

Ron Roy's The Missing Mummy is a spooky-fun museum mystery for 5 year olds in which a stolen mummy turns out to be only the start of the trouble.

What happens

It's the summer holidays and the museum in Hartford is running a whole week of kids' days. Mummy Monday. Tyrannosaurus Tuesday. Wet Wednesday. (Josh would like to know if there's a Tummy Tuesday.) Dink, Josh and Ruth Rose earn the money by clearing out a barn, then hop on the bus.

Mummy Monday means going inside a real Egyptian tomb, rebuilt stone by stone. There are three coffins, and one of them is very small. Just as the lids come off, a woman with long blond hair dashes forward, grabs the child mummy and runs.

Ruth Rose finds it a few minutes later. In the ladies' loo. On the baby-changing table!

But why would anyone steal a mummy and then just leave it? The friends sneak back into the tomb to look for clues, and the stone door slides shut behind them. Nobody knows they're in there.

This is where it gets exciting. They make a bed out of carpet squares in a cupboard and fall asleep. Then a huge bang wakes them, and through a crack in the door they watch two masked robbers empty the treasure cases.

It's worth knowing that the bang is a small bomb that blows a hole in the museum wall. Nobody is hurt and it's not described in a frightening way. The mummies are real people from long ago too, including a little boy, and Josh finds them properly creepy. Most children will love the shivers. A very sensitive reader might want a grown-up close by.

The clues are brilliant for young detectives. A smell Josh can't quite place. A white stripe on one robber's clothes. A tiny pebble where it shouldn't be. Your reader can try to piece it all together before Dink does.

Josh is hilarious (he's always hungry, and his nose turns out to be VERY useful). The banter between the three friends is cheeky without ever being mean.

What to read next

If they're hooked on Dink, Josh and Ruth Rose, The Canary Caper has them hunting for a missing canary, then a missing cat, and then even more missing pets around Green Lawn.