by Martha Grimes
Emma Graham, the child narrator of this fine, melancholy suspense novel, would find To Kill a Mockingbird 's plucky Scout a kindred spirit. Both are small-town girls—both from single-parent families—who poke their noses into a mysterious local murder and learn some life lessons that leave them sadder and wiser. The neglected daughter of a fading resort hotel cook, Emma craves something her mother's pancakes, fried chicken and mashed potatoes can't provide. In the summer of her 12th year, she becomes obsessed with the drowning of another 12-year-old in nearby Spirit Lake 40 years earlier. Prying the past out of the town's old-timers and piecing it together with local gossip and history, Emma unravels the mystery—as well as the recent murder of a 40-year-old woman. Like rural life, Paradise moves slowly, sometimes too slowly, and the narrative suffers occasional lapses. What 12-year-old describes dusk as "that period of lavender light that signals approaching darkness"? But Grimes perfectly captures the world of a lonely and gifted child. (Knopf, $24.)
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