THE ONLY THING LEFT WAS THEIR UNDERPANTS! (A PROFESSOR SPARKY SCIENCEY MYSTERY: Book 1) By John Kelly Professor Sparky is a scientific genius and sausage dog (The sausage dog part is a recent development.) He lives on Floating Island 1178, high above the surface of the planet Duplex with his best (and only) friend, Ellie-Ann. It is Ellie’s job to stop him accidentally killing himself, or blowing up the planet. One morning over breakfast Sparky and Ellie read in the newspaper that some unknown (but probably evil) genius is abducting members of the Extreme Cleverness Society from all over Duplex. The only thing left is their underpants! Realizing there is a pattern, the duo try to prevent the remaining members of the Extreme Cleverness Society from being abducted. (Which is pretty noble of Prof Sparky, considering he was expelled from the ECS after the biting incident at last year's Christmas party.) At the scene of one of the disappearances Prof Sparky discovers: a. A mysterious energy signature. b. A very interesting and familiar smell. He cobbles together a contraption, the Whiff-O-meter (it measures the energy signature of interesting smells), and use it to trace the smell to a robot dog-food factory. Then, after recalibrating it properly, it leads them to… ...CLOUD ONE, the research ship of Drs Odwin and Edwin SpodWangler (yes, CLOUD ONE does look like a cloud!). It is floating high above Duplex studying the migration patterns of the enigmatic Quadflapple birds. But before the SpodWanglers can heed Sparky’s warning, their semi-tame Quadflapple bird, Edgar, has taken a shine to Prof Sparky's glasses and absconded with them. During the ensuing chase the good doctors are both dematerialised. (Prof Sparky does get his glasses back though, so relax.) The rest of the book contains further dematerialisations as Sparky and Ellie find, warn, and fail to prevent the abduction of the other endangered professors. After LOADS more exciting stuff about worm-holes, indescribably foul dog-food, underpants in many exciting patterns, reverse-alchemy, indoor explosions, lava-cats, giant psychic birds, and splunge-diving, they eventually uncover the astonishing truth behind the villain’s motivations. Now read on…