Tom Austen is in Québec for a hockey tournament that coincides with Carnaval. And murder coincides with his tournament. Tom is no stranger to sleuthing, but even he might find the idea of world superpowers and chemical weapons to be a daunting one.

I read this as an 11-year-old and it’s always been my favourite of the Tom and Liz Austen mysteries. High literature it ain’t, and there are definitely some logic gaps that I imagine savvier 11-year-olds today would roll their eyes at, but I do love imagining being in Québec at Carnaval time: the snow, the ice sculptures, the icebreakers on the river, the glorious Château Frontenac… And if you want wish-fulfillment fiction as a preteen, it doesn’t get much better than this, with Tom routinely going off on his own despite being, what, 11 himself, and solving a high-stakes case just like the grownups.

This was first published in 1989 so there are some dated instances of technology, such as the “aerial for a cellular phone” on a suspicious car and the primitive state of online searches (I’m amazed that one character even had a computer, to be honest). This probably wouldn’t do much for a kid today, but for this ageing kid, it hit the spot. ( )