Book review: Mystery of the Roman Ransom by Henry Winterfeld

The fifteenth book I read in 2016 was Mystery of the Roman Ransom, the sequel to Detectives in Togas, by Henry Winterfeld.  Faith and Eric both read the latter for school, although it turned out to be less historically accurate than I had hoped.  Still, there's enough Roman flavor that it helped Eric remember the name of the river that Rome was built on in his history lesson, and the kids both enjoyed the story.

In the sequel, the seven students of Xanthos School once again stumble across a mystery with startlingly high stakes that they and their teacher must unravel. These aren't McGurk mysteries finding missing ball gloves and the like: lives are on the line, which sometimes makes for an uneasy juxtaposition with the humor of the boys' antics.

The best part of this second story deals with a pet lion which is brought up almost off-handedly in the beginning of the book but which, in accordance with Chekhov's principle, ends up going off in a most enjoyable fashion.