Nancy Drew Clue Book 3 – A Star Witness

Carolyn Keene's Nancy Drew Clue Book 3, A Star Witness is a museum mystery for 8 year olds about a telescope that walks off a roof.

What happens

George has joined the River Heights Astronomy Club and talked Nancy and Bess into coming along on the big trip. There is a planetarium, a Hall of Planets you can climb inside, astronaut ice cream that turns out to be dry and crunchy, and a famous astronomer called Dr Arnot doing his show under the dome.

Dr Arnot has brought something special. The Starship 5000, borrowed from an astronomer in Germany. The only one ever made.

After the show everyone goes up to the roof to look through it. It is not there.

The Clue Crew take the case. Nancy has her Clue Book out before the grown-ups have finished panicking, writing motives on one page and suspects on the next.

The nice thing about this one is how fairly it plays. The girls get a caricature artist to draw their suspect so they have something to show people. They sit through two hours of security footage to check an alibi. And when two elderly witnesses describe the same person completely differently, freckles or spots, black hair or brown, fourteen or forty, Nancy does not throw either of them out. She writes down only the parts they agree on.

That is a proper lesson about witnesses, tucked inside a story about a stolen telescope, and it never once feels like a lesson.

The book also stops and asks your reader directly. It lists what the girls have, asks who they think took it and which clues gave it away, and tells them to fetch a sheet of paper before they turn the page. If you have a child who likes being given a job, that page is a gift.

One small thing. It is American through and through. Grape soda, dollars, a caricature artist in the museum garden, planetarium rather than observatory. Nothing a reader will trip over, but the words are worth mentioning.

What to read next

The mysteries in this series stand alone, so there is no harm at all in starting here. If this one goes down well, World Record Mystery sends the Clue Crew after a missing lucky headband while a teenager tries to beat an arcade dancing record in front of a judge.