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