The lights go out for ninety seconds. When they come back on, a one-of-a-kind puzzle is gone.
Ten-year-old Hattie Vance has ridden the Night Owl every school break since her dad became its dining-car chef, and she knows every creak of the old sleeper train. So when famous puzzle-maker Otis Graybeal's prototype, the Owl's Maze, vanishes from his locked compartment during the blackout in the Granite Pass tunnel, Hattie notices things nobody else does: a time stamped on a punch-clock card, a torn ticket scrap, a smudge of chalk on the wrong sleeve.
The trouble is, nobody asked her. The grown-ups have already decided the porter, Mr. Banks, is guilty, because he carries the train's master key. Hattie has until the Night Owl reaches Seaport to follow her clues, get past two wrong guesses, and find the nerve to say what she knows out loud.
Clue Checks along the way invite readers to solve the case alongside Hattie, and the full solution is laid out clue by clue in the Case Notes at the back.
The Case of the Missing Maze opens The Night Owl Casebook, a cozy, fair-play mystery series for kids who notice more than they say. Perfect for fans of A to Z Mysteries, Encyclopedia Brown, and The Boxcar Children.
Ninety seconds of dark. Three small clues. One girl who has to decide whether to speak up.
