Samantha Wolf Mysteries, Book Five - The Haunting of Eagle Creek Middle School

It's been almost a year since I read the last Samantha Wolf mystery, so figured it was about time to delve into her next big adventure. Despite the author's use of present tense rather than the standard past tense used in fiction writing, I have grown rather fond of this series. It is almost a modern-day take on Nancy Drew, with a bit of Trixie Belden thrown in for good measure. Samantha ("Sam") is a typical teenager, with chores and problems at school, but she and her friends are never one to shy away from a good mystery, even if it means they could get in trouble with their parents.  Sound familiar?

The Haunting of Eagle Creek Middle School is set right before Halloween, and author Tara Ellis provides her protagonist with the perfect setting for a good mystery - a haunted house! Or rather, a haunted school! It seems that the school where Sam, Ally, and Cassy now attend has its own resident ghost story. None of them believe it, of course, because there is no such thing as ghosts, right? But when their school club decides to host a haunted house to raise funds for charity, in the hopes of helping a local afterschool program that is struggling, Sam and her friends find that secrets abound everywhere...

What really happened to the husband of Mrs. Potts, the benefactor of the afterschool program?

How much truth is there to the story of the ghost of a former janitor who supposedly died at the school?

And just what part does a local politician, Gregory Kingsman, have in all of this?

The book certainly has all the right elements for a good, old-fashioned mystery, and it is fun to follow Sam, Ally, and Cassy as they stumble across clues and slowly put together the pieces of the puzzle. Their determination to help Mrs. Potts, the afterschool program, and the secret that Mrs. Potts is keeping is admirable indeed, and Ellis manages to build just the right amount of suspense to keep the story moving at a pretty good pace. And the real danger faced by all three girls when they uncover the identity of the person behind everything and actually get kidnapped by the villain reads like a true Nancy Drew mystery!

And while the mystery is a stand-alone story, there are elements that continue to build from previous books (although you don't need to read them to understand what is going on - Ellis provides enough explanation to make it easy to catch up) and clearly story-points that will be resolved or built upon in future mysteries.  Ellis has created a believable world of characters and settings with the right amount of danger and mystery to make it a fresh and enjoyable read.  I definitely recommend this series to those who enjoy children's and young adult mystery series.

RATING:  8 pieces of unique and unbreakable wood out of 10 for proving that an ongoing mystery series for children and young adults can still survive in today's market!