Elis, my five year old, has taken an interest in this hugely popular series of puzzle mysteries for children via a board game. We borrowed a hoard of them at the library, and I was looking forward to reading them to him. Turns out he mostly prefers to read them himself. His parents’ kid, he’s spent hours on his room reading in the last days. This one, however, he decided he wanted me to read to him. We went through it in two sittings.

In it’s own way this is a pretty intricate little mystery about false news printed in the local paper, with some red herrings and a few rather sly clues. Languagewise it might not be completely suited for it’s age group (older than Elis, but still), we had to spend a fair bit of time getting to the bottom of some pretty complicated words. For me, though, it suffers from the same thing most puzzle mysteries do: it’s all plot and too little character. Lasse and Maja, the kid detectives, seem completely void of personality. Still, I enjoyed snuggling up with my boy and speculating about whodunit – as did he. Hopefully we’ll read some more of these. ( )