• Age: 7 to 10
• Grade: 2 to 5

Sam: Dog Detective is bored. There are no ghosts in her house, no monsters, no mysteries! Luckily, Halloween is only a week away; soon Woodford will be crawling with vampires, goblins, mutants and witches. And the sheepdog sleuth's excitement grows when she and her friends, Jennie and Beth, uncover a spooky legend. Once every hundred years on Halloween night, real live ghouls slink out of the woods searching for children to steal away!

When Sam sees hooded, white-faced creatures piling out of a creepy black van, she knows the ghouls have arrived --- but will she be able to put a stop to their horrible Halloween plot?

Mary Labatt is an editor and writer. She is the author of the Dog Detective Sam mystery series, the Sam and Friends graphic mystery novels, the Puppy Sam level one early readers and a novel called A Puppy is for Loving. With all these dog books you can guess what Mary does on her Clear Creek, Ontario farm. She breeds and raises Rough Collies and Welsh Springer Spaniels. In the picture you can see Mary with two of her collie mothers, Annabel and Chloe.

Mary Labatt's profile page

• Winner, Our Choice, Canadian Children's Book Centre

Tiny pictures of the canine with humorous captions open each chapter and are used as text breaks throughout. Because of the simple writing, humor, and high interest of a dog detective solving a not-so-scary mystery, this book may appeal to reluctant readers as well as fans of the series.

School Library Journal