Sammy Keyes and the Cold Hard Cash

By Wendelin Van Draanen

Rating: 4 1/4 stars

This is the 12th book in the Sammy Keyes Mysteries series, but you needn't have read the others to follow the plot of this one. Sammy is sneaking out the fire escape of the senior highrise where she lives with her grandmother when BAM! she runs into someone else! The fright actually causes the man to have a heart attack but as Sammy tries to help the man, he is more concerned about her throwing stacks of $20 bills away from his pockets. Sammy runs for help but the man is dead by the time it arrives. Sammy has never had much in the way of possessions or money, so the thought of all that cash lying in the bushes is too tempting. She picks it up and discovers she has $3,000. Does she tell anyone about it? No! Even though she knows it is wrong, Sammy can't help spending some of it on her grandmother and friends. But she can't get it out of her head...why would someone want to throw stacks of cash away unless there was something shady about it? Without mentioning the money to anyone, Sammy slowly starts to investigate who this old man was and why he was so desperate in a life or death situation to rid himself of it. And as she begins to piece the bits of information together, Sammy discovers this may be a mystery bigger than $3,000. This is an outstanding entry in the series as we continue to develop Sammy's relationships with her friends and her emotional growth along the way to solving the mystery. New fans will be made and old ones will look forward to the next installment in this great series.