13 floors in the apartment building; 13 robberies: the last one being the numbers from the Emerald Kronicker, a cursed clock. But Roy Dodge is on the case, with his somewhat hapless confidential assistant, Gus. As they go from floor to floor asking questions and drawing each room, the mystery slowly reveals itself to Dodge. And they all meet in the lobby fo hear who the thief is. Kind of a disappointing solution to the mystery but the illustrations are fabulous and the suspects are hilarious! The first surprise of this slender, clock tower-shaped board book was that it took over an hour to read. This was partly because I spent twice as much time looking at the illustrations as I did reading the text. Each turn of the page reveals a new level of the apartment building where the story is set, and each level contains further clues and red herrings that the detective (and reader) must use to discover who stole the bejeweled numbers from the landlord's clock.The story reminded me of Ellen Raskin's "The Westing Game" meets Graeme Base's "The Eleventh Hour", so I was delighted when I found out from the author's blog later that both of those books (along with Kit William's "Masquerade" and Georges Perec's "Life, a User's Manual", both of which I now want to read) inspired this one. There's a real-life treasure hunt associated with the book, but I'll leave that to people with more spare time. I think the ending isn't as satisfying as one might wish if you're not planning on participating in the treasure hunt, but even so, it's worth reading just for the fun contained in the book itself.
What do You think about The Clock Without A Face (2010)?
I loved this now and it would have BLOWN MY MIND if I had read it as a kid. A lot of fun.
—tanya
