A tantalizing web of deceptive artwork and wordplay, woven by the master puzzler, lures us to play detective in this fascinating story. Only you, dear friend, can protect Professor Fogarty's discovery of a surviving pair of a species long thought to be extinct.

Reviews

``Dear Friend,'' entreats this book's cover, ``I am in urgent need of your help. Travel to Puzzle Island . . . and help me to save the rarest creature in the world from extinction.'' Thus begins an intricate, engrossing puzzle certain to happily bedevil reader-detectives. Each of 11 elaborately detailed illustrations depicts a different part of the island, and squirreled away in each are the figures of four different creatures (space between certain branches of one tree, for example, is shaped like an upside-down cow). Adshead frames each picture with four alphabets; letters from each are missing, and these can be unscrambled to disclose the names of the hidden animals. Once these amiable tasks have been accomplished, however, the hunt for the ``rare creature'' is far from over. There are more messages to be assembled, concealed words, secret codes, rhyming clues. The text is wordy, the age range here misleading--could a five-year-old rearrange ``abdhimnry'' to spell ``mynah bird''?--but would-be Sherlocks and amateur cryptanalysts with good verbal skills could not wish for anything more. Ages 5-12. (Mar.)