Jex Malone

Gr 7–10—New Jersey teen Jex Malone is forced by court order to spend the summer in Las Vegas with her police detective father, a man she barely knows. Once there, she becomes instantly (and conveniently) embroiled in a friendship and mystery with three neighborhood girls who, like Jex, want to know what happened to Patty Matthews, another teen who disappeared from their block 13 years ago. In Jex's mind, the disappearance of Patty Matthews was the cause of her parents' divorce, since her father devoted all of his time to the case. The plot alternates between moving at lightning speed—with the teens forming their own detective agency (the "Drew-Ids," an homage to Nancy Drew) and discovering new evidence through some creative breaking and entering—and plodding explication as Jex reads along from Patty's long, lost diary, which the protagonists discover in an astonishing visit with Patty's brother. The many characters have little depth, the situations are difficult to believe, and the denouement, while heartwarming, is stilted. When the mystery is solved, an opening is left for this quartet of amateur detectives to reconvene at Christmas.—Sharon Grover, Hedberg Public Library, Janesville, WI