Emil and the Detectives

Emil Tischbein, a schoolboy from a small German town, is sent by train to Berlin with money for his grandmother pinned inside his jacket. When he wakes up on the train the money has gone, and he is sure the thief is the man in a bowler hat who shared his compartment. In the big city Emil follows the man, and a band of Berlin boys, led by the clever Gustav with his motor horn, joins him in a great hunt across the city to catch the thief.

Erich Kästner (1899–1974) published the novel in 1929, one of the first children's books set in a real modern city, and its realism and humour made it a classic; when the Nazis burned Kästner's books in 1933, this one was at first spared. This is the first American translation, by May Massee, with Walter Trier's drawings. Compare The Railway Children.