Join Alec Flint for his first case as he becomes the most undercover detective in Laurel Hollows! Alec Flint is practicing to be a super sleuth. He's even got a pair of super sleuth pants with lots of pockets to hide his detective tools and a sidekick, Gina, who's a bit bossy, but a really great sleuth and friend. When his dad, a local police officer, tells Alec the Christopher Columbus exhibit has gone missing from the town museum, Alec is on the case!

Alec Flint is a super sleuth in training, with one mystery under his belt, and a really great partner named Gina. When Gina's mom, a local newspaper reporter, gets a ransom note at work, Alec and Gina are on the case. The note claims that something belonging to the whole town has been stolen . . . but that something could be anything! The partners do their best to spend as much time as possible sleuthing, but their schoolwork keeps getting in the way. The entire fourth grade is doing a unit on the abstract artist Jackson Pollock that's sponsored by a distant relative of Pollock's. Alec and Gina have more important things to worry about than a bunch of paintings with lots of strange paint dripped on the canvas. But are the detectives overlooking an important clue? Could the mysterious sponsor and the abstract paintings have something to do with the ransom note? Now in a fun, accessible paperback format, the Alec Flint mysteries are reminiscent of classic kids mystery series. So, grab a paintbrush and your super-sleuthing skills and join Alec and Gina for another fun and exciting mystery! Praise for An Alec Flint Mystery #1 THE NINA, THE PINTA, AND THE VANISHING TREASUE: "What sets this \[mystery\] apart is its lively characters, a thoughtfully derived sprinkling of clues for the kids to pursue, and the opportunity for readers to have as much fun solving the mystery (and decoding the coded messages) as Alec and Gina." -BOOKLIST "Santopolo's prose crackles... The first in what promises to be a solid middle-grade series in the tradition of Encyclopedia Brown." -KIRKUS REVIEWS