Rider Woofson 1 – The Case of the Missing Tiger’s Eye

Walker Styles's The Case of the Missing Tiger's Eye is a doggy detective story for 6 year olds, and it's the very first Rider Woofson case.

What happens

Rider is Pawston's top detective, in a big city where every citizen is an animal. He wears a hat and a slightly crooked tie. His only problem is that things have been far too quiet lately.

Not for long. Overnight, a priceless golden tiger with jewels for eyes vanishes from a brand-new jewellery shop. The guard dog swears he saw a shadow twenty feet tall.

So Rider brings in his team. There's Westie, who's always building gadgets (right now it's a jetpack made out of a vacuum cleaner). There's Rora, a clever poodle who doesn't believe in shadow monsters for one second. And there's Ziggy, the youngest, who is ALWAYS hungry.

Ziggy's stomach turns out to be very handy. He slips on a banana skin at the crime scene, and it's their first real clue.

This is a lovely first mystery. The clues are there if you're looking, and a young reader can have a go at solving it before Rider does. He explains the whole thing at the end, so nobody's left puzzling.

It's packed with puns too. The shop owner is a cat called Mr Meow, who's "hiss-terical" about the theft, and there's lots more where that came from (your reader may groan, which is half the fun). There's a big chase through a theatre and across town, with a cream pie, a motorbike and a jetpack that won't do as it's told.

It's short and fast, and there's nothing very scary in it. The shadow giant sounds spooky for a page or so before the team start working out what it really is.

If your reader is just starting on chapter books and loves a gang of friends solving things together, this should suit them nicely.

What to read next

For another animal detective, try Ra the Mighty. Ra is Pharaoh's very lazy cat, but when a scruffy kitchen cat begs him to help a servant girl accused of stealing an amulet, he has to get up from beside the pool.