Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew 28 – Time Thief

Carolyn Keene's Time Thief is a Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew mystery for 8 year olds about a doll that should be inside a time capsule and isn't.

What happens

Thirty years ago, the children at River Heights Elementary buried a time capsule under a willow tree. Now the whole school is out in the playground to watch it come up. The list of what's inside includes a troll with mint green hair, some bubble-gum baseball cards and, best of all, a Margie doll in her glittery ballgown. One of the very first Margies ever made.

The head of the toy company has come all the way from New York to collect her. The lid pops open. There's no Margie.

There's just a shiny quarter that's far too new to have been buried thirty years ago. And Nancy had already spotted that the soil on top looked freshly dug.

So there are suspects to work through. Antonio, the class pest, marched straight to the right tree without even looking at the map. He's also turned up at school with a brand-new bike. Tori from the Margie fan club suddenly claims to own a first-edition Margie of her own. And who's the man with the bushy eyebrows who kept checking his watch?

This one is super silly in the best way. Nancy gets a face full of squirty cheese in the dinner queue. George, who can't stand dolls, is made to go to a doll party. The girls sneak into an antiques auction dressed as rich children, and a toy robot causes chaos in the middle of the bidding.

There's a lovely surprise at home too. It turns out Nancy's dad went to the same school, and he's the boy who put a (very sticky) comic in the capsule all those years ago. Who knew Dad was ever eight?

It's number twenty-eight in the series, but it stands on its own. The three girls are introduced again from scratch.

It's also a gentle introduction to how a mystery works. Nancy keeps a list of suspects, rules them out one by one, and your reader gets to do the same. It's cosy rather than scary.

What to read next

If your reader enjoys it, there are more of the same three girls in the library. Try Ticket Trouble, where Nancy, Bess and George head to their school's Fall Festival, with arcade stalls where the football goal stood the day before and a crow that sings along to the music (badly).