As Lily, Katie, and Jasper try to return home after their adventures in Delaware, they face a protoplasmic monster, sleeping gas, a runaway rice cart, sentient lobsters, and spies of the Awful and Adorable Autarch of Dagsboro.

Agent Q is probably my least favorite "Pals in Peril" tales thus far; it just takes too long to get started, and the target of the skewering is maybe a little too easy for Anderson's usual deftness. Once the eponymous Agent Q, with his over-the-top James Bond, Jr. flashiness, turns up, the book kicks into gear, though, and I enjoyed the climax a lot. Probably my favorite part is the teenage monk who is only allowed to speak sarcastically, so he can work sarcasm out of his system before adulthood.