THE TROUBLE WITH LEMONS

A run-of-the mill mystery: Who put the body in the quarry? Though most of the adults in Tyler's life are not only competent but supportive, several of them are absent: his actress mother, on location in Colombia; his older brother, making his first big movie; his dad, recently lost in an airplane crash. That leaves Tyler, insecurely thinking of himself as a lemon, in the new family home with a motherly long time housekeeper and new groundskeeper Chuckie, an ex-Marine. He also has a new friend, ``Lymie,'' with whom he makes a forbidden night trip to swim in an abandoned quarry. There, they literally bump into a body, which they report anonymously to the police; for rather frail reasons, they don't report the results of their own subsequent investigations until they have provided the plot with a certain amount of excitement involving local bullies and the school principal—and, of course, improved Tyler's self-image. The characterizations here range from predictable to stereotypical (most egregiously, a librarian), while the plot has contrivances like a parallel between Tyler's chauvinist dad, whose wife had a career despite him, and the principal, whose embittered wife was thwarted in the same school profession. Still, Tyler's narrative moves right along. Adequate for mystery buffs. (Fiction. 11-15)