Fifth-grader Cam Jansen heads to an evening book fair with her mother in this twenty-seventh chapter-book devoted to her ongoing crime-solving adventures. Excited at the prospect of meeting her favorite writer, ex-police detective Jim E. Winter, author of the My Name Is Blake mystery series for young people, Cam finds herself involved in a real mystery, when cars start going missing from the parking lot outside the book fair. Can Cam and Jim E. Winter solve the case...?

I thought that Cam Jansen and the Mystery Writer Mystery was an interesting addition to David A. Adler's series, given that it involves an author who writes children's mysteries, and has a published name very similar - first name, middle initial, last name - to Adler's own. Is Winter an authorial stand-in? It's tempting to think so, especially as he is so impressed by Cam's abilities that he promises to put her into his next book. Cam's excited declaration, that her name is going to be in a book, certainly won a chuckle from this reader. The story itself is engaging, and will certainly please young fans of the character and the series. For my part, I was surprised and a little distressed to see that long-time series illustrator, Susanna Natti, who worked on the previous twenty-six entries, was not involved here, and that her place had been taken by one Joy Allen. Allen's illustrations were appealing enough, but I confess to missing Natti's artwork, which was just a little bit less cute. Leaving that aside, this is one I would recommend, as always, to Cam Jansen fans, and to beginning chapter-book readers in the market for a mystery. ( )

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