Fadeaway Girl

December 20, 2010
A 20-year-old kidnapping with faint echoes of the Lindbergh case drives Grimes's convoluted fourth crime novel featuring Emma Graham, a direct sequel to 2005's Belle Ruin. Emma, a 12-year-old cub reporter who also helps out at the Hotel Paradise in La Porte, Md., where her mother's the cook, thinks that the accounts don't add up about the unsolved disappearance of Baby Fay Slade from the nearby Belle Rouen hotel. Emma's doubts center on the possible role of Fay's father, the shady Morris Slade; Morris's spoiled wife; his rich father-in-law; and his former neighbors. The abrupt reappearance of Morris Slade and the arrival of a smug new hotel employee raise further questions and end in sudden death. Grimes's strength is in her appealing characters, from the inquisitive Emma and her dipsomaniac great-aunt, Aurora, to the pretentious 16-year-old Ree-Jane Davidow and philosophical auto mechanic Dwayne, but gaps in logic, lack of red herrings, and frequent references to earlier entries in the series may put off some readers, especially those unfamiliar with the previous books. 4-city author tour.

December 15, 2010

The latest installment in the endless carnival of crime at sleepy La Porte, Md., involves still another return to the storied past.

Now that she's untangled the mystery of exactly which members of the Queen family killed which other members (Cold Flat Junction, 2001), Belle Ruin waitress/cub reporter Emma Graham, 12, is confronted by an even more vexing case: the disappearance 20 years ago of Baby Fay from the loving embrace of Morris and Imogen Slade. Or not exactly, since the infant was being minded, not very vigilantly, by babysitter Gloria Spiker, who returned from an extended phone conversation with Prunella Rice to find her charge gone. The setup echoed that of the famous Lindbergh kidnapping, right down to the telltale ladder, but there was never a ransom demand, and never a sign of Baby Fay since then. Rumor has long maintained that Imogen's father, Lucien Woodruff, kept the police investigation at bay for the first crucial hours, presumably in order to conceal some family secret. Now Emma, provoked alike by kleptomaniac spinster Isabel Barnett's claim to have seen Baby Fay after the abduction and the recent return of Morris Slade to town, is determined to get at the truth. Other 12-year-olds would be daunted, but Emma, who's already confronted armed killers and survived her brother's production of Medea, the Musical, methodically begins interviewing possible suspects, who just happen to be her friends and neighbors, and pondering possibilities. Is Baby Fay still alive, or was she killed in the course of the kidnapping, like the Lindbergh child? Did the kidnappers somehow lose her? Was she a changeling whose fate was intertwined with that of some other baby, or a hallucination of Isabel Barnett's? Was there a conspiracy to cover up the real facts of her disappearance? In fact, how many people actually saw her at Belle Ruin?

Emma is as enchanting as the eccentric cast of her hometown.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

December 15, 2010
Emma Graham, last seen in the disappointing Belle Ruin (2005), returns to better form in this latest episode in Grimes series starring the precocious 12-year-old sleuth. Emma, a cub reporter for the Conservative, is nearly finished telling the serialized story of her harrowing experience in The Tragedy at Spirit Lake. Shes distracted, though, by questions surrounding the disappearance of Baby Fay 20 years prior. The sudden arrival of two peoplethe babys father and drifter Ralph Diggspiques her curiosity. Diggs wins the hearts of everyone in town, except Emma, who manages to put herself in considerable danger as she searaches for the truth about Baby Fay. Emma is not without her charms (especially when shes hiding empty rum bottles on her great aunts behalf or outwitting a dim-witted sheriffs deputy), but to enjoy her adventures, readers must suspend considerable disbelief to accept the idea of a 12-year-old who displays far more savvy than most adults. That hurdle crossed, however, this is an agreeable thriller from a seasoned hand. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Grimes Richard Jury novels sell better than this series, but there will be more than enough spillover to generate requests in public libraries.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)