Book 5 in the Jennie McGrady Mystery series. A spine-tingling mystery in which Jennie and her family frantically search for Jennie's five-year-old brother, Nick. Nail-biting action with a sigh-of-relief ending! Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Gr 5-8‘Jennie McGrady, 16, is a self-styled amateur detective whose skills are put to the ultimate test when her 5-year-old brother, Nick, disappears. The neighborhood is scoured, the police are notified, and Jennie's extended family rallies to support her mother as they wait out the ordeal. Strange circumstances and false clues abound, including the arrival of a suspicious youth in the house across the street, the discovery that two other people are missing, and the obscure revelation that Jennie's absent father has been given a new identity to protect him from unnamed enemies. Love interest appears in Jennie's attraction to a police officer, as well as in the eventual return of her boyfriend, who had been in Alaska for the summer but comes home to Oregon to be by her side. Most unsatisfying is the leisurely sense of time in a tale that should be fraught with urgency and with the strain of great emotion, as the likelihood looms that Nick has been kidnapped and possibly killed. Events mount to a melodramatic conclusion when the insane perpetrator forces Jennie's Mustang off a rainy road and later takes the teen at gunpoint to a secluded cabin where the captives are finally found. Despite a happy ending, readers are left with a sense of too many loose ends and too many stilted emotions.‘Susan W. Hunter, Riverside Middle School, Springfield, VT From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information