James Klise (Love Drugged) delivers a clever mystery told in many voices--through journal entries, interviews, letters and monologues--allowing each character to deliver his or her own spin to the events.
When a fire destroys high school sophomore Saba Khan's apartment in Chicago, friends and neighbors rally to her aid. A family at Saba's school donates for their use, rent-free, a luxury condominium, and students at Highsmith School organize an auction to benefit the family. Everyone brings donations to raise money so that Saba and her family can get a fresh start. Kendra Spoon, who leads the effort, wants to "make sure they're better off after the fire than before." But trouble looms when an album of paintings, "a potential art treasure," is found among the donated items and attributed to outsider artist Henry Darger. An art expert verifies the authenticity of this windfall, and the paintings are insured for $550,000. But shortly thereafter, the paintings go missing. The police are called in, and questions abound. Where did the album come from? Who should benefit from the insurance money? And, most importantly, just what is the real truth here?
Klise's short chapters do more than efficiently advance the story. Readers will be fascinated to see how unfolding events can be interpreted in so many different ways. Greed and jealousy go head-to-head with kindness and good intentions. The author weaves a satisfying mystery here and, yes, everybody has secrets. --Lynn Becker, host of Book Talk, the monthly online discussion of children's books for the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators