Poison Most Vial

A VOYA Top Shelf Middle School book featuring a young amateur sleuth determined to prove her father is not a murderer.

Murder in the lab! The famous forensic scientist Dr. Ramachandran is stone-cold dead, and Ruby Rose's father is the prime suspect. It's one more reason for Ruby to hate the Gardens, the funky urban neighborhood to which she has been transplanted.

Wise but shy, artistic but an outsider, Ruby must marshal everything and everyone she can to help solve the mystery and prove her father didn't poison his boss. Everyone? The list isn't too long: there's T. Rex, Ruby's big, goofy but goodhearted friend; maybe those other two weird kids from class; and that mysterious old lady in the apartment upstairs, who seems to know a lot about chemistry . . . which could come in very handy.

"Carey mixes toxic chemistry and logic problems in his second middle-grade mystery to good, if not great effect. Budding chemists and crime-scene investigators will especially enjoy this science whodunit." —Kirkus Reviews