Janie’s Private Eyes by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, 1989.
This is part of the Stanley Family mysteries series.
Janie Stanley has decided to open her own detective agency, The J.V. Stanley Agency, Incorporated, Private Eyes, with the help of her younger siblings and some other friends. Eight-year-old Janie has had many different aspirations in her young life, from being a Shakespearean actress to being a vampire, so her older brother, David, doesn’t take her detective games too seriously at first.
However, at Mr. and Mrs. Stanley’s New Year’s Eve party, Janie’s “investigations” come to everyone’s attention when she borrows David’s tape recorder to make audio recordings of guests talking and plays them on the stereo that has been hooked up to speakers to play music for the party. Gossipy Mrs. Dorfman recognizes her own voice, saying uncomplimentary things about her hosts and the other guests, and leaves in a huff of embarrassment. When Janie’s father confronts her over the incident, Janie says that she was trying to find evidence on a murderer. When her father and David question her further, she says that old Mr. Rupert, the deceased father of the Mr. Rupert who owns the local grocery store in Steven’s Corners, was murdered.
When old Mr. Rupert died around Thanksgiving, all the kids in the area were sad. He was always nice to kids when they were in the grocery store and would sometimes give them candy for free. They called him Grandpa Rupert. But, Grandpa Rupert’s death was a heart attack, natural causes. When David asks Janie what makes her think it was murder, she says that she suspects his son and his wife because they inherited the grocery store. David says that he doesn’t think that Al Rupert would have killed his father. Janie also says that she heard that there was no autopsy after the death, and she thinks that’s suspicious. David says that it was well-known that Grandpa Rupert had heart trouble, so a heart attack wasn’t unexpected. Janie also says that Huy, the younger brother of her friend, Thuy Tran, saw the mailman talking to Grandpa Rupert just before he died, but David doesn’t see why that’s so suspicious. Eventually, David and her father talk Janie out of her murder investigation idea, but it turns out that the “murder” wasn’t the only investigation that Janie has undertaken.
Dogs in the area have been disappearing, and the Tran family has come under suspicion. The Trans haven’t been living in the United States for very long. Originally, they came from Vietnam. The reason why people are looking at them suspiciously is because dogs started disappearing around the time the Trans moved to the area, and there are rumors that Vietnamese people eat dogs. (Hint: No, the Trans aren’t eating dogs. That’s an old stereotype/rumor that’s been used against various immigrant groups, and no dogs are eaten in this story.) Janie knows that the Tran family isn’t guilty of dognapping, but proving it is another matter. After the trouble at the New Year’s Eve party, she asks David and Amanda to help her investigate. At first, they don’t want to, but David does have to do a journalism project for school with a partner, Pete Garvey. Pete Garvey is the school bully who also has a crush on Amanda (which is established in a previous book in the series), but he likes the idea of interviewing people about their missing dogs.
However, even though David, Amanda, and Pete Garvey begin talking to people about the missing dogs, Janie and the other members of her detective agency are still on the case! David has great misgiving about Janie’s involvement. Then, suddenly, Pete doesn’t want to work on the project anymore and starts behaving suspiciously. What does he know that no one else does?
The book is available online through Internet Archive.
The girls ask Miss Wade about the doll, and she says that she knows the one they mean, but she no longer has it. Her mother’s uncle was the captain of a ship and used to bring her presents from around the world. The doll, called Lady Vanderbilt, was very fancy, and Miss Wade describers her costume to the girls. However, she says that the doll disappeared after she rented her house out to a family one summer while she was traveling. She never found out what happened to the doll, but she assumed that the children of the family probably found her and either took her or broke her. Miss Wade said that she didn’t think that the doll was worth making a fuss about, so she never asked the family about it. The girls note that Miss Wade doesn’t seem to know anything about a precious jewel in the doll, but they decide not to say anything about it since Miss Wade doesn’t have the doll anymore.
The girls tell Miss Wade and their mothers about the doll, but when they try to ask the people in charge of the auction where the doll came from and who bought her, they learn that the woman who was in charge of organizing the toys has already left on vacation. The only clue that the girls have is that the woman who bought the doll left the auction in a red Jaguar.
This book was originally written in German. It was written in Germany during the 
At the beginning of this story, it explains that Emil Tischbein’s father died when he was very young and that his mother works hard as a hairdresser to support the two of them. When she can, she saves a little money for Emil’s grandmother as well. When the story begins, Emil is preparing for a train trip to Berlin to visit his relatives. Emil will be traveling by himself and will meet his relatives near the station when he arrives. His mother gives him some money to take to his grandmother and warns him to be careful. Emil pins the money inside his pocket for security.
Determined to get the money for his grandmother back, Emil searches for Herr Grundeis and spots him getting off the train. It’s too soon for Emil’s stop, but he follows Grundeis off the train anyway, tracking him to a café.
Gustav recruits a bunch of other boys from the neighborhood, and they continue tailing Grundeis through the city to his hotel. The boys call another friend at home, who keeps track of their progress and gives them reports about what others have said. Emil gets one of the other boys to tell his relatives that he has been delayed on important business, causing his cousin, Pony Hutchen, to come and tell him that everyone is worried and that he’s going to be in big trouble with his relatives if he doesn’t show up soon. However, they still have the problem of deciding how to confront Grundeis and get him to return the money. In this case, the detectives don’t need to solve the mystery of who the thief is. The real problem is how to prove it.
There was a note in the beginning of my copy of the book that says that many of the character names in the book are actually jokes on the part of the author. It’s not as obvious in English because the forms of the names sound reasonable for German names, but anyone who knows German would spot that they aren’t real names. For example, Emil’s last name is Tischbein, which means “table-leg,” and the thief’s alias, Grundeis, means “ground-ice.”
Coffin on a Case by Eve Bunting, 1992.
A Clue in Code by Marilyn Singer, 1985.
Sam and Dave decide to begin their investigation with Willie. His father is the school’s custodian, and Willie has been using a copy of his father’s key to the school to sneak around after hours. To the twins’ surprise, when they confront Willie, not only does Willie deny stealing the money, but it turns out that he’s actually been scared and upset himself. After being caught stealing the last time, his parents have been especially strict with him, sending him to bed early, limiting his time with friends, and not allowing him to watch tv or read comic books. In fact, his father tried to get rid of his entire collection of comic books by throwing them in the trash, but Willie rescued them and has been hiding them in the school, sneaking away to read them when he can. However, someone has discovered them and stolen them. Willie wants his comic books back, but he can’t report them stolen because his father thinks that they’re already gone. Worse still, his parents will be even harder on him if he ends up taking the blame for stealing the class’s trip money.
In spite of Willie’s reputation, which he deserves, Sam and Dave think that he’s telling the truth about the thefts. Then, they happen to find a strange message that appears to be written in code after some of their classmates were throwing paper airplanes. With the help of Rita, a friend who is very good with codes, they decode the message and uncover a valuable clue that explains why the comic books were taken and leads them to the thief’s identity.
General Butterfingers by John Reynolds Gardiner, 1986.
Mrs. Wilson and Walter talk to a lawyer, but he says that, since the General apparently didn’t leave a will, the estate has to go to his nearest relative, which is Ralph. As far as he’s concerned, there’s nothing they can do about, even though the General made a verbal promise to the men that they could stay in his house for the rest of their lives.
In some ways, you could feel sorry for Ralph, who is a very unhappy person. Because of his meanness and selfishness, his father spent years giving him pretty much anything that he wanted on the condition that he not come around to see him. Ralph is hurt at his family’s avoidance and disdain for him, which is why Walter, at one point, invites him to come for dinner and be their friend. However, Ralph’s motives are always selfish, and that causes him to suspect that the same is true of everyone, so he refuses their kindness. It gives the impression that he’s probably done the same for many others over the years, for the same reasons.
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 
