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PAYMENT IN DEATH

Marion Crook.
Toronto, ON: Overlea House, 1987.
172pp., paper, $3.95.
ISBN 0-7172-1610-1. Distributed by Franklin Watts. CIP.


Grades 5 - 8 / Ages 10 - 13
Reviewed by Joan McGrath.

Volume 15 Number 3
1987 May

It is bad enough when a body is found outside the George family's general store, but when a second corpse is discovered right inside the freezer, things are serious indeed. The family are newcomers to Chilliwack, British Columbia, and this is not exactly the way they would have preferred to get acquainted with their new neighbourhood. The sooner the mystery is solved, the better.

Susan George, her widowed mother, and three brothers find themselves drawn into the web of intrigue that has led to the violent deaths, and Susan is more than a little attracted to young RCMP Constable Allan Ross, who is assigned to investigate. Their combined detective work leads to a cliff-hanger of a finale in which Susan has a near escape from death herself.

Closer in tone to an adult whodunit than to a more typical Young Adult mystery, in spite of the youth of the sleuths involved, Payment in Death is replete with crimes of a serious nature, flip dialogue, and the promise of further development in the attachment that is growing between Susan and Allan. Light, bright, and unserious; and the first of a proposed series of Susan George mysteries.

Joan McGrath, Toronto Board of Education, Toronto, ON.
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