For Ages
10 to 99

Sammy Keyes and the Killer Cruise is a part of the Sammy Keyes collection.

"The most winning junior detective ever in teen lit. (Take that, Nancy Drew!)" —Midwest Children's Book Review

Sammy knew that getting to know her new rockstar dad on a cruise would be a little uncomfortable. . . . But when the heiress to a perfume empire disappears from the ship, it turns out everyone's in for a rocky ride.

In this penultimate book in the Sammy Keyes mystery series, Wendelin Van Draanen pays homage to the mystery…

An Excerpt fromSammy Keyes and the Killer Cruise

I was allowed to bring one friend. And since Marissa McKenze has been my best friend since third grade, and since it looks like she'll be moving to Ohio in June because her mom's lined up a job there, and who knows how long it'll be before I'll get to do anything with her again after that, and since I wasn't allowed to bring Casey because he's my boyfriend and it would have been "inappropriate," and since my other good friend Holly thought cruising sounded like a nightmare, the choice was easy.

Marissa.

Even Mrs. McKenze was for it, and she's never for anything that has to do with her daughter spending time with me. According to her, I'm "hazardous."

And yet, there we were, at the Long Beach dock with our luggage and passports, about to cruise to Mexico.

Actually, I think Mrs. McKenze being okay with the trip had more to do with Darren Cole being my dad than her daughter having one last adventure with her best friend.

He seems to have that effect on middle-aged women.

Something…