THE HAMPTON HOUSE MYSTERY

A summer campout near a supposedly haunted house turns deadly for a teenage amateur sleuth and her friends in the latest entry in the Dinswood Chronicles series.

Nancy Drew fans will feel right at home in this fourth stand-alone episode, as rising Dinswood Academy junior Emma Higsby, joined by classmates Doug Harwood, Sebastian Conners, and Martha Merriweather (who’s also Emma’s best friend), hear rumors of mysterious doings near a creepy, isolated house. In a strung-out caper hung about with handy coincidences—as well as standard-issue elements from a cryptic message and a hidden tunnel to armed kidnappers and arson—the young sleuths uncover evidence of chicanery in high places. Meanwhile, even as they’re being chased and threatened, previously doused flames of passion flare up again between Emma and Doug. Along with including an improbable twist regarding a new friend who’s an adoptee, the author lets her adolescent characters escape any serious consequences for housebreaking and other mischief as they head, in a delayed but sudden rush, toward a tidy resolution. Alexander shoehorns in an arrest and confession, while never giving the villain even a brief walk-on role and leaving unresolved apparently contradictory revelations about the FBI’s role in all of this. Characters read white.

A thinly disguised pastiche with a notably hurried wrap-up.