TRIAL BY JOURNAL

The authors of Letters From Camp (1999) again take diaristic fiction to another level with a tale of grown-up chicanery told entirely in correspondence, casual sketches, printed ephemera, receipts, newspaper pages, advertisements, transcripts of radio news programs, and journal entries. Despite the lack of a body, everyone in Tyleville believes that slow-witted loner Bob White has killed 11-year-old Perry Keet. Thanks to a new state law, Perry’s classmate Lily gets an insider’s view of the ensuing trial, for she is chosen to sit on Bob White’s jury, even though it means being sequestered and losing weeks of school. Lily’s journal, along with notes and sketches from fellow jurors, link a sheaf of circumstantial evidence that gradually points not to Bob, but to Tyleville’s resident tycoon, Rhett Tyle, and his secret confederate, Anna Conda. They are con artists who had been planning to turn the local zoo’s huge snake collection into a line of designer fashions, but are now preparing for a quick getaway after auctioning off the oeuvre of the zoo’s new, star attraction: a gorilla named Priscilla, who has suddenly started painting recognizable pictures. Sound complicated? That’s only an overview—but the Klises keep it all in the air with expertly timed revelations, distinct character voices, and seemingly bottomless reserves of droll, inventive humor, and readers get a surprisingly credible look at how the jury system works. (Fiction. 9-12)