This col­lec­tion of sto­ries about the Ortho­dox Jew­ish ver­sion of Nan­cy Drew includes 10 sto­ries from pre­vi­ous Devo­ra Dore­sh books. Much like the oth­er young female detec­tive, Devo­ra has the ear of the local police, an amaz­ing mem­o­ry, a great deal of free time, and an astound­ing abil­i­ty to go almost any­where and meet with near­ly any­one she choos­es. Unlike Nan­cy, though, Devo­ra also has the teach­ings from her Juda­ic class­es in school to guide her. Each time she encoun­ters a crime, she is able to draw on some­thing she recent­ly learned in school to help solve the mys­tery. While pre­teens who enjoy mys­ter­ies will like­ly have fun read­ing about Devo­ra and her exploits, most will not get to enjoy solv­ing the case along with our hero­ine; the expla­na­tions of how she cracks the cas­es main­ly comes to the read­er as Devo­ra explains it to the police. Sim­i­lar­ly, the con­nec­tions between the school lessons and the crimes are some­times so ten­u­ous that read­ers may won­der how, exact­ly, Devo­ra came to (of course) the right con­clu­sion. The writ­ing is chop­py, char­ac­ters oth­er than Devo­ra are fair­ly flat, and much of the dia­logue sounds con­trived. That said, there are few mys­tery options for girls who pre­fer to read about Jew­ish char­ac­ters and val­ues, and they will wel­come this new vol­ume. Ages 9 – 12.