THE KEY WORD AND OTHER MYSTERIES

. . . or All Around the Town with Encyclopedia Brown. New York City institutions substitute for Idaville backyards in these five mystery/puzzles (four of them reprinted from Boy's Life and elsewhere) and Asimov's smart, stalwart kid is named Larry, but he's as quick as Sobol's to solve his detective father's cases—finding the key word Dad needs to break a criminal code in the Times crossword puzzle; locating the museum's stolen coins by positing a far-fetched confusion between Santa Claus (Kris Kringle) and Christkindl (the creche in a nearby church); and—as any dinosaur freak will foresee when the jewel thief dying in the Natural History museum whispers "Try Sarah Tops"—turning up a missing diamond in the Triceratops skeleton. Clicking away perpetually and refusing all rewards ("I was only doing my duty"), Larry saves the Soviet UN offices from a threatened bombing by remembering that their Christmas day is our January 7, and—though he hates to put the finger on anyone—clears a classmate suspected of sneaking test questions by directing the principal to the real culprit, a female A student. Brisk—if you feel that the Apple flavoring warrants the new line.