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At first glance, the book resembles those old classics retold, with its dark green cover and title in a narrow black box. But the dimensions and the picture on the cover make it different. The tagline suggests it is part of a series. This bodes well because we don’t have too many good series for young readers.

Who are these ‘rulebreakers’? Jaggubhai (gangsterized version of Jagannathan) and his friends Keerti, Rishi, Tejas and Monica, a gang of five without a dog. That last bit is precisely the problem because what use is a gang without a dog? Especially if you’re a teenager and have been brought up on a diet of Enid Blyton? That’s the crux of this story—presumably, with this matter being taken care of in the first book, in the rest of the series they will be a gang with a dog, so that will bring everything up to speed.