Mystery at Riddle Gully - Softcover

Banyard, Jen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1921888741 ISBN 13: 9781921888748

Publisher: Fremantle Press, 2012

Synopsis

Pollo di Nozi, a reporter-in-training, has a nose for news. Weird things are happening in Riddle Gully and Pollo smells a major scoop. With Shorn Connery, her sheepish sidekick, Pollo is determined to track down the truth. But is Will, the new boy in town, conspiring with the pushy mayor, the Graffiti Kid, and a strange Transylvanian to send her sniffing up the wrong trail? Suspensful and humerous, this book unravels the mysteries of Riddle Gully.

About this title

About the Author

Jen Banyard is the author of the novel Spider Lies. Her work has also appeared in children's magazine and in an anthology.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Mystery at Riddle Gully

By Jen Banyard

Fremantle Press

Copyright © 2012 Jen Banyard
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-921888-74-8

CHAPTER 1

Friday 18:45

Pollo di Nozi crouched behind a tombstone, watching the stranger swish through the grass. She reached out, twisted off a stalk of wild lupin and held it to the snout of the stout grey sheep clamped under her arm. She prayed it would keep him happy. Now wasn't the time for Shorn Connery to start bleating. Pollo — supersleuth and editor of the Riddle Gully Gazette — was onto something.

Around her, twilight was settling in, the shadows draped between the graves beginning to dissolve, the forest beyond the meadow already still. While Shorn Connery crunched, Pollo wound his rope lead round her waist to keep him close. She tied it with a tug, then fished out the small pad and pencil that hung from her neck. She scribbled a few notes.

Moving only her eyes, her pencil twitching expectantly, she tracked the man in the grey light. He walked in slow, wide circles, hands clasped against his chin, long fingers flexing and straightening like insect wings. Nearby, from a large silver case propped open against a headstone, a blue light blinked.

Pollo jiggled her shoulder. It was still tender where this same man had banged into her barely an hour before, bursting into the second-hand shop right on closing, just as she was leaving. So what was he up to now? Here in the Riddle Gully graveyard? When all the other adults in town were watering their rose-bushes or grilling their chops?

She had an excuse. Shorn Connery needed his daily walk and fresh lupins, and dusk was the only time they could come without Father Perry wringing his hands and tut-tutting. But what about him, this stranger?

He's no mourner, thought Pollo, eyes narrowing. He wasn't muttering deep-and-meaningfuls or dabbing his eyes or tenderly plucking out weeds. She tapped her pencil on her chin. No, he looked much more like ... like someone waiting for something.

But what? It was her job to find out. They didn't call her a supersleuth for nothing. The second he made a move she'd be right behind him. She owed it to the readers of the Riddle Gully Gazette.

The readers ... A thought snuck up and tapped her on the shoulder. The Youth Reporter cadetship — the part-time post at the Coast news network! The deadline for applications was four days away. She'd only just hit high school so, as things stood, her chances weren't great. But what if she could dig up the story on this shady character and get out a scintillating special edition of the Gazette in time? That could change everything. She'd be irresistible! She could be a bona fide investigative reporter before she knew it!

The light in the stranger's silver case started blinking wildly. Pollo peered as the tall man strode across to it and studied it intently. Suddenly, he scooped up the case and, cradling it to his chest, began loping from the graveyard, towards the forest.

The supersleuth sprang. But the rope still tied around her middle snapped taut. Her feet flipped out from under her and she hit the dirt face first, centimetres from Shorn Connery's snuffling nose. Spitting soil, she squinted through the lupins. The man had nearly reached the trees! Her story was getting away!

She scrabbled to her feet, plucking at the rope, cursing her bitten fingernails. Shorn Connery, meanwhile, threw everything he had into reaching a fresh patch of lupins.

'Keep still, boy!' she pleaded.

In the distance, the man cleared the falling-down fence between the meadow and the forest in one bound. A moment later he'd melted into the dark undergrowt

Edition details

• Publisher: Fremantle Press
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1921888741
• ISBN 13: 9781921888748
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128