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  • The Wig in the Window by Kristen Kittscher
  • Deborah Stevenson
Kittscher, Kristen . The Wig in the Window. Harper/HarperCollins, 2013. [368p]. Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-06-211050-3 $16.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-06-211052-7 $10.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 5-8.

Young and Yang are secret agents—or, to put it more accurately, twelve-year-old Sophie Young and Grace Yang are wannabe spies who maraud their neighborhood in search of wrongdoing. Grace is particularly convinced that Dr. Agford, the saccharine new counselor at Sophie's school, is hiding something, and though the girls tip their hand by publicly accusing her of bloody murder (she was chopping beets), their investigation has actually revealed a few suspicious things. As they play cat and mouse with Dr. Agford, for whom Sophie must do yard work as a penance, they realize that she may be connected with a terrible crime in Texas, and they discover that the FBI itself is interested—or have they been taken in by the story of a vengeful woman with a cast-off FBI badge? Secondary characters (Sophie's brazen and tech-savvy new friend Trista) and Sophie's obsessive and endearingly pretentious love of everything Chinese add some flair to this action-adventure genre tale of sleuthy kids stumbling on a real crime, and it's entertaining to watch the girls gallop around the suburban streets hissing code words into walkie-talkies. The plot is exceptionally ludicrous, though, with nonsensical twists and turns, and a horrific background tragedy clashes with the escapist flavor; additionally, the girls' frequent tendency toward triumphant meanness undercuts their likability. This therefore isn't Benedict Society-level capering, but it's always enjoyable to watch lively, capable preteens outsmart the adults.

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