Something About Sleuth

Bear with us.

I found some notes about how The House Where Nobody Lived (2006) boasts being published by the Dial imprint, Sleuth. House was the only book in the Bellairs Corpus with this distinction, though these notes indicate the first of Brad Strickland’s Grimoire series (Curse of the Midions, 2006) was published through this imprint, too. Two years later, The Sign of the Sinister Sorcerer (2008) reverted to regular ol’ Dial Book for Young Readers. Was Sleuth this short-lived? Or just for books in the Bellairs Corpus?

Book collector Russ Bernard provided some thoughts on where Sleuth came from and where it went:

"After looking around online, it seems to me this “Sleuth” imprint has moved around a bit among the Penguin list of publishers. I found some Dutton titles listed as Sleuth, I also found some Razorbill books marked as Sleuth, and some “Speak” (another Penguin publisher) titles listed as Sleuth. I suspect that this is a line (perhaps belonging to a particular editor) that has moved from publisher to publisher within Penguin books looking for a home. I do not think that they were a separate publisher because they always seem to be associated with some other publisher’s name. But I have not found any direct information stating any of this."

Does anyone else have any insights, or know of other Sleuth titles?