Synopsis: Unassuming watchmaker Hermux Tantamoq is getting quite a name for himself. Following his adventures in the desert, he finds himself being sought out and charged with protecting the Varmint Variety Theatre from mysterious threats and designing a stage set at the same time. As if that were not enough, he has to thwart the vile Tucka Mertslin's latest attempt at self-aggrandisement, solve the mystery of a missing film star and keep his beloved Linka Perflinger from the arms of a despicable film maker. Quite a busy schedule for a very ordinary mouse.

Review: There is something quite fantastic about Michael Hoeye's rodent-centric adventures; a sort of sweetness-without-tweeness that is rarely achieved. The third Hermux Tantamoq adventure, like its predecessors, works by placing its unremarkable hero in a remarkable situation. Even after thwarting industrial espionage and locating the lost city of the cats, Hermux is an utterly unpretentious, utterly charming hero. As before, he is surrounded by a cast of eccentrics, both loveable and vile.

The setting of the Hermux Tantamoq stories is, on the surface, rather cutesy, but this is a clearly deliberate ploy. The winding plots are anything but winsome, the villains are properly villainous and the stories are as packed full of action, intrigue and romance as one of the less overwrought Bond movies.

Against such a backdrop, the otherwise sickly-sweet innocence and decency of Hermux - who thinks of the lovely Linka Perfinger as nothing more indecorous than a 'special friend' and invests in his relationship with his pet ladybird with an almost serial killer intensity - shows up as a precious thing indeed. No Time Like Show Time is a fine entry in an inventive and very different series. While the anthropomorphic characters might suggest otherwise, it is a sophisticated novel, most suitable for older readers.