Green Streak: A Zeke Armstrong Mystery by Daniel J Hale and Matthew LaBrot

• 01/02/2014
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Green Streak: A Zeke Armstrong Mystery
Daniel J Hale and Matthew LaBrot
Top Publications (2004)
ISBN 1929976283
Reviewed by Brianne Plach (age 10) for Reader Views (1/08)

Zeke Armstrong and his friend Pow Wow Gao are happy to be chosen to go to New York City for the annual Big Apple Inline Skate-Off. But their happy trip is soon changed into a very frightening experience. They are witnesses to a mugging of a woman. If that isn’t bad enough, it wasn’t just any woman but it was someone who they had just met.  Was it just a random mugging or is there more to it than that? Zeke Armstrong is an Encyclopedia Brown type kid who wants to get to the bottom of this mystery. Will the chance of competing and maybe winning the final competition be more important than solving this crime?

Mysteries for middle readers can sometimes lack suspense and a great adventure but “Green Streak” lacks neither of these. The pages of this book are action-packed with the two stories of competing in the skate-off and getting involved in helping solve this crime. Some of the clues given are obvious and I could figure them out. But just when I thought I had the mystery solved, there would be another twist in the story. Zeke is a typical kid who gets himself into some pretty scary situations but the ways he gets out of them are really funny.

The first Zeke Armstrong mystery, “Red Card” is an award winner, and “Green Streak” is sure to be a winner of an award too. With books like this, there is no reason why kids would not be able to find a book which they enjoy. I could see adults liking this book in addition to the kids.