WHO STOLE UNCLE SAM?

Although they agreed never to try to solve mysteries again, Alex and Yasmeen can’t resist when Sam Banner, Alex’s baseball coach, disappears into a porta potty and reappears only after the game, the team’s first win of the season. It seems to have been a kidnapping; the kid sleuths received a ransom note. But the victim has returned and the police, including Alex’s detective mother, have moved on to other cases. This third in the Chickadee Court series of holiday mysteries takes place in small-town Pennsylvania between Memorial Day, marked by the accidental explosion of the town fireworks shed, and the real fireworks of the Fourth of July. Wound into the well-paced narrative are questions about professionalism in youth baseball, references to the protests of the 1960s and the harm lawn chemicals may be doing to the Chesapeake Bay today—and plenty of false leads. Readers starting the series here will certainly want to celebrate other holidays with Alex, his neighbor Yasmeen, his detective cat Luau and their friends. Fine fare for summer reading. (Mystery. 9-12)