A review by libreroaming
Pepper's Rules for Secret Sleuthing by Briana McDonald

3.0

An okay children's mystery with higher than usual stakes than the usual missing item or ancient riddle. Suffers from the very common pitfall of the children refusing to tell an adult about the crime and endangering themselves instead for the sake of the plot. It's extra frustrating because one of them goes to a therapist to uncover information about a clue but won't disclose that it's related to a murder. The main protagonist sleeps in an abandoned car after her dad has been kidnapped rather than tell anybody he's missing with obvious evidence of foul play. Some readers won't mind that, but to me it made the continued tension feel forced and the characters seem callous in their handling of the situation.