THE BODIES IN THE BESSLEDORF HOTEL

Another hectic, slapstick, often charming mystery about Bernie Magruder. Bernie, 11, lives in the Bessledorf Hotel, where his father is the manager. His mother writes romance novels "in her spare time." Bernie and his friends, when not trying to figure out how to get into the Guinness Book of World Records for expertise in skateboarding, try to discover how three dead bodies found in the hotel become missing, and, then, not dead. (A fourth body—really dead—is AWOL from the funeral parlor next door.) Bernie, a nervous, likable detective, is afraid his father is going to lose his job and his mother is going to run off with an old boyfriend, Jackson Prather, until Prather is revealed to have been—at various times—the three phony bodies in disguise. A frothy, farcical novel, with much well described physical comedy, especially a wonderful whipped cream fight. Though the writing is occasionally forced, most readers should like this a lot.