Daniel Hale

Red Card by: Daniel J. Hale and Matthew LaBrot
Review by: Nathan Carolan

Red Card is about a boy named Zeke Armstrong that is 13 years old living in Dallas. Zeke joined the Sun dogs soccer team and is a really good player. Zeke gets caught up with a shooting of his soccer team coach, that he witnesses. Zeke is determined to find the killer of his coach and bring him to the law. Red Card was a very good book in my opinion, because there was action all the way through the book. I never got show more bored with reading the book. The book also had some great suspense for who the killer was that makes you want to read the book and find out. The message in this book is to say that if you do something bad you will be caught. Boys and girls would like this book. If you like soccer you would too, but you don’t have to like soccer to read it. There is another book in the series called Green Streak. To read Green Streak you don’t have to read Red Card. show less

Green Streak is the second book in the Zeke Armstrong Mystery series. Fun, fast paced and just right for the 9-14 set, this book has it all…dangerous villains, an amateur sleuth, New York City, a damsel in distress, and of course in-line skating! Zeke Armstrong is off on another whirl-wind adventure…while visiting New York for the Big Apple In-Line Skate Off with his friend Pow Wow (and Pow Wow’s Parents) the boys befriend an older woman at a refreshment stand and no sooner have they show more met her, she is being mugged and knocked out by a very strange in-line skater…dressed all in green! While Pow Wow stays with Mrs. Winthrop (his dad is a doctor after all), Zeke races off after the purse snatcher only to find that his is rather a strange purse snatcher after, he doesn’t just take the money and ditch the purse…there is much more involved in all of this and Zeke has just taken his first steps (skates?) toward solving this mystery!

Overall, it’s a very exciting, fast-paced mystery that has just the right mix of clues, action and danger that will keep you wanting to read until you reach the end…and even then you’ll want more! I certainly found it hard to put down…in fact, I didn’t. I read this in two hours and enjoyed it immensely (and I’m 37)! I feel that this book is ideally suited for middle-grade readers (3-6) and believe that it would also make a suitable for younger readers as a read aloud (provided they are able to enjoy a read aloud story without pictures), as the chapters are relatively short. I’m giving Green Streak five stars and two thumbs up, it’s a traditional mystery in a modern wrapper that I think reads of all ages can enjoy! One final note: this second book in the series was published in 2004 and there have been no additional books published for this series since (that’s 4 years) so my best guess is that there won’t be any more and we are all very disappointed about that. We’d absolutely LOVE to read more of Zeke Armstrong’s Adventures. show less