Teach Reading and Writing Issue 19

H i. My name is Dirk. Dirk Magrew. Well, it isn’t actually. It’s Hamzah, but when we started the Magrew Detective agency, I thought I should give myself a new name. I began the agency after Miss Taylor’s glasses went missing. That ended badly, as she had left them in the staffroom. I thought that we had a sneak thief in school and was caught carrying out a search. They thought it was me! Outrageous. Since then, the agency has expanded. Hamid isn’t the brightest apple in the fruit bowl, but he’s dogged in pursuit of criminals. Our caseload has been heavy. We almost caught the kid who was breaking into local houses and wrecking the place when the owners were out walking. And we nearly got the robber at the Big House who had taken poultry and, apparently, a rare audio harp. Now we are on a new case. The press have dubbed this villain, ‘The Bulldozer’. Though I suspect that bulls are not involved. Or cows either. Pie Corbett models how to rewrite a traditional tale as a quirky detective story The BULLDOZER 42 | www.teachwire.net