Lantern Sam and the Blue Streak Bandits by Michael D. Beil (review)

Riding the Lake Erie Shoreliner with his mother and sister from New York to meet his father in Ashtabula, eleven-year-old Henry Shipley finds himself burdened with the acquaintance of ten-year-old Ellie Strasbourg, a wealthy girl with an aggressive manner of finding friends. Just as Henry’s warming up to her chatter, Ellie goes missing, and Henry, conductor Clarence, and Clarence’s telepathic cat, Lantern Sam, become detectives in search of the errant heiress. The mystery grows more intriguing once it becomes obvious Ellie is still onboard the train, and the impromptu gumshoes are faced with a sort of rolling locked-door puzzler. Much of the tension deflates, though, when Ellie is found bound up but safe with plenty of chapters still to go, and identifying the baddies isn’t quite as fun as searching the train. However, alternating chapters that chronicle Lantern Sam’s previous cat lives are consistently amusing, and an action climax at the 1937 inaugural run of the real life Blue Streak roller coaster in Conneaut Lake, Pennsylvania is a satisfying payoff. Beil scatters clues broadly enough for a challenge, yet makes them transparent enough for tyro ’tecs to whiff out, assuring that most middle-graders will happily reach the mystery’s solution a stop or two ahead of Henry.