Easily the best part of Christmas for me these days is the package I receive from my Secret Santa! We’ve been playing this game for a few years now, my blogging friends and me, and even though sometimes it feels like we’ve all read everything to do with classic mysteries, and even though our financial limit on gifts is about a quarter of what it costs to mail them, we still manage to surprise and delight each other every time. True to form, this year’s Santa bequeathed me a surprising and delightful assortment of books, including one that is a perfect candidate for my Krimes for Kids reviews. (I have a feeling that my Santa likes these kinds of books as much as I do; maybe it was the note he included in this volume that read, “I was tempted to keep this one for myself!”) 

Sheila Turnage is a mystery author I had never heard of before. She hails from eastern North Carolina, where she lives on a farm and has been turning out books for about a dozen years. Her debut novel, Newbery Award-winning Three Times Lucky (2012) is the first in a four-book series, and after reading it I’m afraid there’s more spending on books on my horizon. Because this one is an utter delight!

Our hero and narrator, Miss Moses LoBeau, is a “rising sixth grader” who lives in the town of Tupelo Landing, North Carolina. The place is small, consisting of two streets: First Street and Last. But the assemblage of one hundred and forty-eight eccentrics who populate the town make the place seem much bigger and far more interesting than you might expect. Everyone is blessed with names out of a Southern Gothic story, like Tinks and Skeeter and Grandmother Miss Lacy Thornton. They all eat at the Colonel’s café, run by the beautiful Miss Lana; they all attend the Reverend Thompson’s Baptist church on Sundays and the Nascar races on Thursday nights. There’s plenty of sniping and gossiping, but when the going gets tough, they look out for each other. 

Of course, I’m writing about this one because, in addition to the fried bologna sandwiches and the pontificating of Mayor Little and the twittering Azalea women who make up the Uptown Garden Club, Tupelo Landing is swirling with mystery. And I do mean “swirling,” enough to rival the hurricane that is slowly bearing down on the town. The biggest, most existential mystery centers around Mo herself: eleven years earlier, a man dressed in the uniform of a military colonel crashed his car into a sycamore tree near the creek and emerged miraculously unscathed – except for a seemingly permanent bout of amnesia. When the man observed a raft floating downstream with a basket tied to it – a basket containing a baby girl – he dove in and rescued it. And that’s how Moses got her name!

In the present day, Mo resides with the amnesiac Colonel and the beautiful Miss Lana in the café, where she helps with the customers, plays with her best friend Dale, and writes notes every day to the “Upstream Mother” who must’ve given her away, puts the notes in bottles, and sends them down the river. Despite her misgivings about her birth, Mo has it pretty good, until one summer day when “Trouble cruised into Tupelo Landing at exactly seven minutes past noon on Wednesday, the third of June, flashing a gold badge and driving a Chevy impala the color of dirt.”

A police detective named Bill Starr shows up at the café to inform the residents that he is investigating a murder that happened in Winston-Salem. Before long, he will be investigating the murder of one of the people in that café, and because this happened to “one of their own,” Starr will have to deal with a rival sleuth when Mo and Dale open up their Desperado Detective Agency and begin sleuthing on their own. 

I have to admit that for the first half of this marvelous book, the mystery seems to hang on the edges of the narrative, like huge things often do in the minds of eleven-year-old children. But it doesn’t matter because I love the repartee between Mo and Dale and between kids and adults. One can’t help but be reminded of Atticus Finch, who never talked down to Scout and Jem, never dismissed their concerns or ignored them.

But then, you can’t ignore Miss Mo LoBeau. She has such a fabulous and funny voice that you just want to spend time with her and listen to her talk. You root for her in her rivalry with snooty classmate Anna Celeste (aka “Attila”), and cheer on her heavy crush for Dale’s gorgeous, race car driving older brother Lavender. She’s witty and (sometimes) thoughtful and still manages to believably be eleven years old. When surprised with the task of delivering an impromptu eulogy at the murder victim’s funeral, she doesn’t disappoint:

“I’m Mo LoBeau of Desperado Detectives. I was used to Mr. Jesse and I’ll miss him . . . I’m sorry he’s dead, but I’m glad I found the murder weapon . . . One thing I learned from him was even if you’re stingy, tip good. Finally, I’d like to say if you are the murderer, Desperado Detectives will hunt you down like the dog you are. Thank you.”

In the second half, the tension ramps up considerably: Mo’s family is torn apart by a pair of kidnappings and Dale’s by the return of his abusive father. And there’s the matter of Hurricane Amy bearing down on the town. It’ll take all their ingenuity to survive both the storm and the conspiracy that surrounds them, particularly when a surprise villain is unmasked. It comes at a cost for both of the Desperado Detectives, but their friendship is what helps them see the light, both on a sleuthing level and a deeper one. 

Three Times Lucky offers us a fresh and funny storyteller in Sheila Turnage and the irascible Mo. Woven into this hilarious and moving mystery is a deeply affecting look at what it takes to be a family. And even though the book has a satisfying ending, it leaves you wanting more – more of Mo and Dale’s crime-solving exploits to be sure, but also a resolution of what led baby Moses downriver in the first place. Thankfully, Turnage has provided three more installments of Mo’s adventures, beginning with The Ghosts of Tupelo Landing which I picked up yesterday.

I can’t wait to return!