The first book in the Inspector Dexter series -
The Case of the Missing Chocolate Pudding
Middle school is tough on everyone but if you aren't a good student, aren't athletic and can't play an instrument, what's left? You become an amateur detective. Meet Dexter Poindexter all elbows and knees and as graceful as a three-legged chair.
When a whole case of chocolate pudding disappears from the Gladys Purvey Hockings Middle School's cafeteria, Dexter is on the case. He doesn't have much to go on - just a partial footprint in the storage pantry, the help of an Austrian exchange student and his police detective grandfather's wisdom. He has to sort through a motley bunch of suspects that include a gang of bullies, the football team, the band, a maintenance man with a secret, a new employee with a lazy eye, the cafeteria manager's cousin and the school principal.
Meanwhile, Dexter has to go about the business of being a mediocre student with no athletic abilities while he dodges love sick middle school girls, unhappy Spanish teachers, underwear wedgies and cannon fire from Civil War re-enactors to solve the case of the missing chocolate pudding.
Dexter is a hero for all the kids who don't fit in.