RETURN TO BONE TREE HILL

After years abroad, 18-year-old Jessica’s returned to Vancouver Island, where she’s now plagued by nightmares about the week she left. In her dreams she’s a murderer, standing over the body of local simpleton Charlie. Charlie did vanish that week that 12-year-old Jessica left the country, and now she’ll do anything to prove that she isn’t—or is—the murderer. She narrates in the first person as, bit by bit and clue by clue, her memories of that week return. Although Jessica’s heavily expository amateur sleuthing is a little thin on narrative tension (even a confrontation with a homicidal maniac doesn’t create much in the way of drama), this is a perfectly pleasant puzzle. The plot could benefit from more padding to make character motivations more believable, but though there’s not much rich character development, it is an enjoyable and neatly tied-up mystery. (Mystery. 12-14)