Every neighborhood has its secrets.

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On Almond Street, there were a great many of them.

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There was the mystery of where socks went when they

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vanished from the laundry. There was the puzzle of the

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doorbell that rang when nobody was there. And there was the

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oldest secret of all: what, exactly, the cat next door was always

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staring at.

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Most of these mysteries went unsolved, because most of

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the residents of Almond Street were busy people who did not

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have time to lie very still on the carpet and think.

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But there was one resident who had all the time in the

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world.

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His name was Botas.

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He was a black dog with a magnificent scruffy beard, two

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warm brown eyes the color of toffee, and a nose so clever it

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could tell you what was for dinner from three rooms away. In

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that beard he kept his most important clues — and, if we are

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being honest, three crumbs of yesterday's toast.

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Botas was not an ordinary dog. Botas was a detective. The

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finest detective on Almond Street, in fact, a title he had given

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himself one rainy afternoon and which nobody had thought

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to argue with.

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He did not have a real magnifying glass, though he had

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once found a single round lens under the couch and

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considered it perfectly good for a dog of action. He did not

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have a notebook, because his paws were far too large for

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pencils. Instead, he filed every clue away in his nose, which

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never, ever lost a single one.

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And he had a rule, the only rule a great detective truly

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needs:

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No mystery too small. No

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nap too short.

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This is the story of his most marvelous adventures — the

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ones that began, as the very best adventures so often do, with

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something going terribly, mysteriously missing.

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THE MARVELOUS ADVNTURES OF BOTAS

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