Die drei ??? und der Karpatenhund

"What's the point? Everything is just an illusion anyway.""Illusion?", Peter repeats."Exactly. Everything is an illusion. The entire world. We are all just a herd of sleeping animals, having a bad dream. But I will wake up soon!"

(Quote translated from German.)

Growing up, I was obsessed with this children's/young adult mystery book series called The Three Investigators. It's interesting how this series originated in the US, but was way more popular over here in Germany where it was dubbed Die Drei Fragezeichen (transl. The Three Question Marks). I'm just one of many who grew up with these and there are still kids nowadays that read these book and listen to the audio play versions.
I had a whole bunch of these books and audio play tapes as a kid. This one, The Mystery Of The Invisible Dog - or Die drei ??? und der Karpatenhund which is the title I always knew it as - was one of my absolute favorites in the series. I only had the audio play version of it back then though so this is the first time I actually read the book.

I think what made this one of my favorites back then and what I still really like about it on this late revisiting is that it's a really nicely contained story that's taking place in a single neighborhood for 95% of the time. So a lot of the book is focused on getting to know the residents of the place, learning about their individual relationships, and having the main characters surveil the area while all sorts of odd things go on. It makes for a pretty mysterious atmosphere. I think that vibe came across especially well in the German audio play adaptation I listened to as a kid but it's also here in the book.

The prose is of course a very simple language given that this is a children's book after all but the investigated crime is unravelled in a pretty clever way and it's giving a lot of genuine clues for the young readers to figure things out themselves before they're revealed. There is an element about sleepwalking that's stretched a bit much but otherwise the story is wrapped up well. The way the titular dog comes into play, which is missing and searched for throughout most of the book, is still a simple but very clever reveal that I remember impressed me as a kid.

Reading this as an adult now doesn't make it as suspenseful as it was when I was a kid for obvious reasons, but I still think this is probably a highlight in this series and a good read for younger audiences.