DOPPLEGANGER

When it comes to mysteries, sometimes they come to you and sometimes you have to go out and find them. That’s Roni Delicata’s theory when she starts to look into a cold case involving a missing child that looks eerily like her partner in detection, Brian Bain. Having solved capers in Snatched (2006) and Skullduggery (2007), the two young sleuths delve deeply into the boy’s past only to find that things just don’t add up. Brian has memories that don’t fit with the stories his parents have told him, and Roni finds clues that suggest that there may be a boy out there that shares Brian’s face. Once again, our heroes start poking their noses where they don’t belong and in doing so come face-to-face with a ten-year-old murder. The ending wraps up a little too neatly, with a murderer confessing to a crime in a magnificently convenient fashion, but the combination of high-speed chases, mysterious doubles and creepy strangers will undoubtedly please fans of the previous books in the series. (Fiction. 8-12)