Alibi

September 22, 2014
The spooky abandoned house on this book’s cover suggests something a bit more sinister than what’s going on in Butcher’s fast-paced addition to the Orca Currents line of books, written at a third-grade level. Fifteen-year-old Christine is eager to spend a two-week summer vacation with her eccentric great-aunt Maude in tiny Witcombe, British Columbia, where Maude owns an antique shop. Christine’s stay kicks off with a bang, when she is sucked into a mystery involving a series of local thefts and a cute lifeguard at the town pool. A breezy pseudo-Scooby-Doo vibe whisks readers forward as Christine does clumsy surveillance and suspects are considered, until a humorously unlikely culprit is unearthed. Butcher has just scratched the surface of her likeable and entertaining cast, whose future adventures would be welcome. Simultaneously available: Siege by Jacqueline Pearce. Ages 10–14.