'No Time Like Show Time' is the third adventure of watchmaker and mouse, 聽Hermux Tantamoq. Hermux is called to the Varmint Theatre (to install 聽alarm clocks in the dressing rooms), but soon finds himself roped into 聽designing the stage set and solving a baffling murder mystery. 聽As in previous volumes, the plot is engaging and the writing witty. 聽Favourite characters from the first two books, (like aviatrix Linka 聽Perflinger and beauty-product megalomaniac Tucka Mertslin), make a 聽welcome return - and we meet a whole cast of colourful newcomers: 聽Fluster Varmint the theatre manager, Nurella Pinch a mysterious aging 聽film star, and a very peculiar ventriloquist. Hermux's pet ladybug, 聽Terfle, also takes a starring role in the plot - and the touching 聽relationship between mouse and bug is as charming as always. 聽This is perhaps my favourite book of the three - but it also has to 聽be said that some of the plotlines might perhaps be rather 'grown-up' 聽for the very youngest: murder, love triangles, an unwed pregnancy, an 聽abandoned single parent ... all softened under mouse-fur and whiskers, 聽but there none-the-less. Such themes are commonplace in contemporary 聽teen fiction, but surprising in anthropomorphic bedtime stories for the 聽under nines - and at times seemed a little surreal. In all probability 聽it'll go over the heads of most youngsters, and it didn't bother me - 聽but some parents might want to read the story through first.