This is a series of solve-it-yourself mystery stories. Each book contains short mysteries for readers to solve along with the characters.

TACK is a group of friends who solve mysteries together. The name of their organization comes from their initials, except for the last one. The books all begin with an explanation of the group and the kids who are in it.

T = Toria – Her full name is Victoria Gardner, but she doesn’t like being called Vicky. She is the one who narrates the stories. She wants to be a newspaper reporter when she grows up, and she considers the journals she keeps of the group’s cases to be good writing practice. (The entries in her journals are the short stories in the books and are dated with a month and day but not a year.) She has a little sister named Holly who is not a part of TACK, and she considers Will to be her best friend since Abby moved to another town. Her father is an inventor who also does magic tricks as a hobby.

A = Abby – Her full name is Abby Pinkwater. Abby and Toria were best friends before she moved away. Now, Abby is considered their “Agent-on-Remote” because the others still consider her part of the group, even though she no longer lives close. She moved away even before the beginning of the first book in the series, but she sometimes comes to visit or writes letters to the others about problems at her new school.

C = Chuck – Although Toria considers Will her best friend aside from Abby, Chuck and Will are really best friends with each other. Chuck has an older sister named Kate who gets married in the course of the series and a dog named Duchess. He’s known as both the best cyclist and the best speller at school. In many of the stories where he has a prominent role, he introduces the other characters to the mystery, but he doesn’t appear in every story. Will and Toria are the two most prominent characters.

K = Will – His full name is Will Roberts, and he’s the leader of the group, although he leads in a very informal way. Will’s initial is the odd one out. They use ‘K’ in place of his initial both because it makes their acronym easier to pronounce and because ‘K’ stands for “SWITCH” in telegraph language, and they think that’s an appropriate code name for him “because of the way his mind can switch all over the place.” He has a habit of wearing green and blue plaid shirts. All of his shirts have that same pattern just because he really likes it.

This group doesn’t really identify as an official club, saying that they don’t have a clubhouse or uniforms. They consider themselves more as “a network of kids” and a “secret service” that people in their seaside town Sandy Harbor don’t really know about, although they help people in town to solve their problems and mysteries when they can.

The series was written by Marvin Miller and Nancy K. Robinson.

Books in the Series:

TACK to the Rescue (1982)

TACK Secret Service (1982)

TACK Against Time (1983)

TACK into Danger (1983)