Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew 27 – Cat Burglar Caper

Carolyn Keene's Cat Burglar Caper is the twenty-seventh Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew book, a mystery for 8 year olds about tiny kittens disappearing from the animal shelter.

What happens

It starts with Bess moaning that she's sooo bored. Then Hannah goes missing! Well, not really. A greasy rag and a gap in the toolbox are all Nancy needs to find her next door, fixing up a very old truck.

The real case turns up after a trip to the cinema. Chief McGinnis pops into Pete's Pets to ask about two newborn kittens gone from the River Heights Animal Shelter. Nancy asks on the spot whether the Clue Crew can help.

More kittens vanish. The suspects pile up. There's Pete, who has some very similar kittens for sale. There's John Jones, who breeds them on a farm called Kind Kittens. And there's Ms Berman, the shelter director, who can't stop yawning and rushes off after a whispered phone call.

Meanwhile poor Bess finds out she's allergic to cats. She falls for a kitten, then sneezes. And sneezes. And sneezes. At one point she's peering through the shelter window while standing on Nancy and George's backs, which ends about as well as you'd expect!

It's a really good one for learning to think like a detective. Bess decides very early on who did it and wants to ring the police. Nancy says hang on, let's check first. They look up how to care for newborn kittens instead, and what they learn turns out to matter.

There's lots of warmth in it too. Hannah turns out to be brilliant at mending cars, Bess gets to help her, and the girls have ice cream sundaes for breakfast because it helps them think. (Hannah makes them promise to eat healthily for the rest of the day.)

If you've got an animal-mad reader, they'll love all the kitten detail. The babies are bottle-fed every few hours and are far too small to climb out of their glass cage, so somebody must be taking them. But who?

What to read next

For another Clue Crew case full of animals, try Zoo Crew. Nancy, Bess and George go to camp at the zoo, and this time it's the animals' toys that keep going missing.