THE CASE OF THE WIGGLING WIG

This is the 25th book starring Jack McGurk (The Case of the Absent Author, 1995, etc.), private investigator and iron-fisted leader of the McGurk Organization, and the five neighborhood kids who are McGurk's eyes, ears, and gofers. This time the hero is housebound with a broken leg when a case conveniently presents itself right next door. Are the new renters FBI agents? Treasury investigators? Plenty of stakeout duty, close surveillance, meticulous notes, and diagrams (reproduced in black-and-white illustrations) lead the Organization to finger the tenants as thieves and to prevent a major robbery. What's fun is that it's possible to imagine ordinary kids doing everything the McGurk gang does, from booby-trapping a vacant lot to sending messages in semaphore code. Hildick's British idioms contrast oddly with the US locale, but fans of this kind of fast- moving formula fiction won't pause long enough to notice. (Fiction. 8-11)