The Many Mysteries of the Finkel Family

Gr 3-7–Twelve-year-old Lara Finkel’s determination to become as successful a detective as her literary heroine, Georgia Ketteridge, leads her to create her own agency, FIASCCO (Finkel Investigative Agency Solving Consequential Crimes Only). Lara isn’t prepared when the only mysteries she finds are strange behaviors in her own family, and her spying leads to her uncovering secrets she would rather not know. Her discoveries include the dismaying news that her father has lost his job, her brothers are both hiding things from their parents, her annoyingly perfect cousin is having difficulties, and her sister, Caroline, who is her best friend, has replaced her with a boy at school who is a very bad influence. In a family where her father has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and she and her sister are autistic, Lara feels attacked, and hits back at her family by sharing all their problems, and further separating herself. Kapit doesn’t lean on stereotypes usually characterizing characters on the spectrum. Lara finds a reasonable way to interact with her family through the rabbi’s sermon during Yom Kippur, discovering the road to forgiveness.