By Tom Palmer
A football-mad boy who dreams of reporting on the game gets pulled into a real crime around his favorite club.
Danny lives and breathes football, and wants nothing more than to report on it one day. Then, filming around his favorite club, he stumbles onto something that isn't a game at all, a crime tangled up with one of the players, and he's the only one who's seen it. Chasing the story pulls him from the stands into real danger, and the same football knowledge that makes him a fan is what lets him piece it together. It's a mystery with the pace of a match, built for a reader who'd rather chase a story than wade through a long one.
Tom Palmer writes for exactly the child who loves football and doesn't love books, short chapters, plain sentences, and a plot that never stops moving. Wrapping a mystery in the sport a reluctant reader already cares about does the hard work of getting them to page two, and the shortness gets them to the end. It's the lightest, most purely fun book on this shelf, and the surest hook for a sports fan who reads below grade level.