The Case of the Crooked Campaign by Lewis B. Montgomery, a Mysterious Review.

Review: Jazz is running for president of the student council, only to discover that all her campaign ideas are being adopted by her competition — even before she can implement them! — in The Case of the Crooked Campaign, the ninth early chapter mystery in this series by Lewis B. Montgomery and illustrated by Amy Wummer.

Milo is her campaign manager and he's determined to discover how Zack, who's running against Milo, is learning of their promotional ideas. Fortunately, the latest lesson from Dash Marlowe, Secrets of a Super Sleuth, has arrived to give him some advice. "Everybody knows that clues help a detective solve a case. But all clues aren't created equal. A clue that seems important may turn out to be a red herring — irrelevant information that leads you away from the real solution." Is Milo being misled by red herrings in his investigation? Maybe he'll need to rethink his approach to solving this case.

The general premise of this series is that Milo and Jazz are correspondence students of world famous private investigator Dash Marlowe, with the lesson of the day always applicable to the case at hand. But "red herrings" is a tough concept for children to understand, and it doesn't seem particularly well applied here. Still, the case is interesting, if more than a little quirky, but once Milo and Jazz have solved it, their attempt to turn the tables falls a bit flat and is more silly than clever. This is generally a good series, and a recommended one, but The Case of the Crooked Campaign isn't one of the young sleuths' better outings.

All the books in the series end with several pages of picture and word puzzles, all of which are very good for kids, some of which may stump their parents!

The publisher recommends this book for children aged 7 to 11 with a reading level of RL-3. As of the date of this review, The Case of the Crooked Campaign has not yet been assigned a Lexile measure, though previous books have ranged from the mid-400Ls to the low 500Ls.

Acknowledgment: The Kane Press provided a copy of The Case of the Crooked Campaign for this review.

The Case of the Superstar Scam
The Kane Press (Trade Paperback), January 2013
ISBN-13: 9781575655192; ISBN-10: 1575655195

The Case of the Crooked Campaign

The Milo & Jazz Mysteries by Lewis B. Montgomery