Kirkus Reviews

“There’s always room for another detective team on the junior fiction shelves, and the dynamic duo of fifth graders, Drake Doyle and Nell Fossey, have the added appeal of being amateur scientists as well as amateur sleuths. Torrey uses short sentences, snappy dialogue, and lots of droll humor for the second entry in what promises to be a successful mystery series. Drake and Nell are well-drawn characters who solve four short mysteries in this volume, involving a sickly cat, an inflatable sea monster, oil-covered penguins, and defaced posters from a school election. Torrey, a microbiologist as well as a talented writer, skillfully injects the scientific method and principles into each case, and an appendix offers humorously written experiments and activities that relate to each case. Newman’s spot illustrations and a few full-page illustrations in black-and-white line drawings add to the humor and also illustrate authentic reasons for writing (business cards, receipts, letters, and lab notes) that teachers will appreciate. In fact, teachers will be among the first fans of this series, as the cases would make great read-alouds in elementary classrooms, with built-in science experiments as follow-up activities.“

School Library Journal

“Move over, Encyclopedia Brown-Doyle and Fossey have arrived. Drake Doyle is the scientist while Nell Fossey is the one with the detective skills. This amusing duo solves four cases quickly and efficiently by scientific deduction. Each story is complete in two chapters. Humor abounds, most of it tongue-in-cheek, which most kids love. While the two protagonists are multidimensional, many of the secondary characters are stereotypical, sometimes on purpose, such as the Beauty Princess Extraordinaire. The black-and-white halftones and line drawings have the right touch of zaniness. As an added bonus, there are instructions for the experiments that were used to solve the mysteries.”

Booklist

“In the second Doyle and Fossey: Science Detectives title, fifth-grade sleuths Drake Doyle and Nell Fossey solve more mysteries involving scientific principles. Discovering why Zappy the cat isn’t eating is a lesson in static electricity; a suspicious lake monster reveals a schoolmate’s self-serving prank and the principle of buoyancy; catching a school vandal offers an introduction to fluorescence. Torrey uses lots of parenthetical asides and humorous commentary, and she does a nice job explaining scientific principles and vocabulary within the silly stories. Included are a few science activities and experiments, written simply and with light humor. The black-and-white cartoonlike drawings are more for entertainment than explication, but the book is a fast, easy read and fun way to learn about some everyday scientific principles.”