The January Green and Gold Mystery
The super-sleuth: Bethany Graham: Beth lives with her mother, Bridget Graham, a single parent. A loner, precocious, "almost fourteen", as she keeps telling everyone, Beth is very sensitive about her height and size (she feels she's built like Fort Knox). A computer whiz and a word collector, she loves reading. Beth is very close to her mother, but there are times when she wishes Bridget would remember that they live in a democracy. How could Mama arrange an after school Math tutor for Beth, without even discussing the matter with her first? Worst of all, the tutor she's picked is their neighbor's mother from India. When the other kids see Mrs. Naidu in her sari, they are going to die laughing; and Beth's going to die from embarrassment. Desperate to have company in her misery, and to keep word about her strange tutor from spreading, Bethany tells Cody, her good friend, that she and Mrs. Naidu have formed a secret "Mystery-Solving Club". Gullible Cody begs to join "the club." Soon all of Bethany's friends are members. Then, out of the blue, a burglary occurs nearby that no one can solve, and all of the tutoring group work together, with the help of Mrs. Naidu, to figure it out.