“The Case of the Counterfeit Criminals (The Wollstonecraft Detective Agency #3)” by Jordan Stratford

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Rating: 3/5 Stars

The third book in the Wollstonecraft Detective Agency series throws a new mystery at the girls Ada Byron Lovelace and Mary Shelley, as well as their sisters. Ada is recovering from the illness she got in the second book, and she selects an apparently mundane case to recover, a lost dog. Only this is a special dog as it belongs to Mary Anning, the celebrated palaeontologist.

But before the case gets started, Ada’s grandmother unexpectedly returns, throwing the agency into turmoil, for the grandmother wants Ada to get well and will not let her out of bed. As the girls work out ways to get together without been seen, they discover the case is not what is seems, for Anning’s dog has apparently been kidnapped and will only be returned if Anning will authenticate obviously fake fossils at the upcoming opening of the British Museum.

Compared to the previous two books, this book concentrates more on the tricks the girls have to get up to avoid been seen by Ada’s grandmother and banned from the household. Little detective work is actually done, and the resolution of the story apparently depends on Ada trusting Anning to do what Ada expects her to do at the museum. An unresolved plot point in this book involves the battle of wills between Ada and her unseen adversary (the smartest girl in England) who appears to be involved with the kidnapping.

Hopefully, the next book (a preview of which is given here) will return to concentrate more on the girls doing detective work and less on avoiding the grandmother.

Book read from 2017/02/20 to 2017/02/25