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Summary
Summary
Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery
Two friends set out to solve the years-old mystery of a murder, testing their friendship and placing them in danger, in this creepy thriller by suspense master Mary Downing Hahn.
A pair of thirteen-year-old boys investigate the unsolved theft and murder that took place in the old house one boy's family has just moved into. Their quest takes them to the highest and lowest levels of society in their small Maryland town, and eventually to a dark and derelict amusement park where someone will go to any length to shut down their investigation for good.
Themes of adjusting to a new town, navigating complex friendships, and resisting a bully are deftly explored in this eerie page-turner.
Author Notes
Mary Downing Hahn grew up in College Park, Maryland. After graduating college, she worked as an art teacher, a college instructor, and a children's librarian in Prince George's Public Library System. She published her first novel, The Sara Summer, at the age of 41. Since then, she has been a full-time writer and averages one book a year. Her ghost story Wait till Helen Comes was the winner of 12 state children's book awards and she received the Scott O'Dell award for her World War II novel Stepping on the Cracks. She currently lives with her husband in Columbia, Maryland.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Horn Book Review
Thirteen-year-old Logan's family moves to a small Virginia town in which an unsolved murder took place. Logan and his nerdy neighbor Arthur team up to try to solve the mystery; a sinister, shuttered theme park called Magic Forest plays a central role. This eerie, atmospheric story is as much about friendship and fitting in (or not) as it is about murder. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-Another well-done, action-packed mystery from Hahn. This book starts off as seventh-grader Logan Forbes learns that a murder had been committed in his family's new house three years earlier. Myrtle Donaldson, a bookkeeper accused of embezzling from the local amusement park, was found dead in her ransacked house and her killer is still at large. Logan's next-door neighbor, Arthur Jenkins, a sixth grader with a bottomless stomach and a quirky personality, is convinced that Mrs. Donaldson was falsely accused, and he wants Logan to help him find the real perpetrator. The boys discover a letter and puzzle left among the woman's possessions that convinces them they are on the right track. Their investigation includes visiting the abandoned and overgrown Magic Forest amusement park, a reporter with secrets, shady property developers, a menacing convict, and purloined library materials. It all culminates in a terrifying nighttime showdown among the kudzu at the Magic Forest where the truth is revealed. This is an enjoyable mystery with just the right amount of frightening and dangerous elements to entice readers. Logan is a sympathetic character-a new kid in town trying to find his place in the pecking order, almost immediately befriended by someone on the lowest rung who turns out the be the right friend for him.-Terrie Dorio, Santa Monica Public Library, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Thirteen-year-old Logan Forbes will have a lot to say in his "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" report in seventh grade next fall. His family has moved into a house known as the "murder house," he's made friends with nerdy outcast Arthur Jenkins and the boys have teamed up to help solve a murder and find embezzled money hidden in the nearby Magic Forest, a theme park now bankrupt and fallen into nightmarish disrepair. Though the murder mystery is the hook, this is really a story of two outsiders becoming friends played out in the small Virginia town of Bealesville, as Hahn capably dissects social strata of the town and school. The first-person voice serves the story well, though Logan occasionally seems too young for his observations. As always, the author is brilliant at establishing toneeerie, creepy and surreal. The "cold case" mystery, the over-the-top fun of the Magic Forest scenes and the even darker mysteries of friendship and school life will make this a sure hit. (Mystery. 10-14) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
