THE HAMSTER OF THE BASKERVILLES

For a box of jelly doughnuts and two Get-Out-of-Detention-Free cards, fourth-grade gumshoe Chet Gecko takes on his most baffling case yet: someone—or something—is trashing the classrooms of Emerson Hicky Elementary, leaving huge footprints, claw marks on the walls, and an aroma of peanut butter. Though Chet suspects The Dirty Rotten Stinkers, a sixth-grade gang led by oversized tarantula Erik Nidd, the waters are considerably muddied by reports of a giant hamster haunting school grounds at night. What gives? It’s all faculty intrigue, as it turns out, with one teacher and her professed love slave (an assistant custodian) trying to frame a rival who has transformed a meek library assistant into a were-hamster. Chet’s overwrought prose (“Some Mondays drag in like a wet dog, dripping puddles of gloom and trailing a funky stink . . .”) and nonstop penchant for cracking wise, along with his mockingbird sidekick Natalie Attired’s fondness for bad jokes, more than compensate for the truly hyper-contrived plot. A cast of grammar-school tough guys inhabits the scattered illustrations, and, as crime waits for no gecko, trailers for Chet’s next few capers are appended. Clever, good fun. (Fiction. 9-11)