Down the rabbit hole

Review by Booklist Review

Gr. 7-10. Thriller writer Abrahams crosses into youth territory in this rich, smoothly written mystery with a protagonist whose character is as substantial as her name and whose home and school experiences have the feel of real, sometimes messy middle-class life. When Ingrid Levin-Hill, 13, decides to run to soccer practice rather than wait for her ride, she gets lost in a not-so-nice part of town. Luckily, Cracked-Up Katie, one of Echo Falls' oddballs, calls her a cab. Convinced that full disclosure will only cause a lecture, Ingrid keeps her secret. Imagine her shock when she learns that Katie has been murdered--and Ingrid's cleats are at the crime scene. It isn't long before Ingrid starts feeling like Alice in Wonderland plunging down the rabbit hole. Homey details add enormously to the texture of the backdrop, and characters, including adults, are fully realized: Ingrid's not above a snotty comeback when she is feeling ornery or sees through adult pretense; curmudgeonly Grampy puts VO in his tea and defies convention by teaching Ingrid target shooting; and there's more to Joey Strade than his clumsy crush on Ingrid. Abrahams is concerned with adult motivations here, and his irony occasionally seems too arch for kids. But there's also plenty of excitement and just-right humor (Mom's constant concern about Ingrid's retainer is classic) as Ingrid's Alice-like curiosity pilots her, in bumbling stops and starts, right into the arms of a killer. Great start for the Echo Falls series. --Stephanie Zvirin Copyright 2005 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

The charming 13-year-old heroine of Abrahams's (A Perfect Crime, for adults) murder mystery will guide readers through its many twists and turns. Ingrid Levin-Hill, who, like her hero Sherlock Holmes, is "a habitual noticer of little things," has just been cast as the lead in Alice in Wonderland when she finds herself in a different role-murder detective. The corpse is that of "Cracked-Up Katie," whom Ingrid encountered when she attempted to get from her orthodontist to soccer practice-and wound up five miles away in the poorest part of Echo Falls. The next day, the local paper states that Katie's body was found soon after Ingrid left her house; realizing she's left her red soccer cleats behind, Ingrid breaks in to retrieve them. But she's not the only one in Katie's house that evening. Ingrid's sleuthing is complicated by a budding romance with the police chief's son, and the dialogue crackles with wit-Ingrid gets the best lines. It's disquieting, however, that big brother Ty, the football star, blackens Ingrid's eye in anger without repercussion, and many of the supporting characters are more fully developed than her nuclear family; the town's newspaper editor, her curmudgeonly Grampy and even Cracked-Up Katie come across as more convincing. And dropped threads abound(e.g., will Grampy stave off developers by populating his farmland with endangered eastern spadefoot toads?) Readers who stick with this intelligent, if overstuffed novel will be clamoring for answers-and more of Ingrid. Ages 10-up. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by School Library Journal Review

Gr 6-9-Peter Abrahams' splendid contemporary mystery (Laura Geringer Book, 2005) is ripe with allusions to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Arthur Conan Doyle's stories about Sherlock Holmes, and Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder. It all starts when 13-year-old Ingrid Levin-Hill's mother is late picking her up from the orthodontist and Ingrid decides to walk to soccer practice. She gets lost and ends up on the wrong side of town in the house of a well-known poor woman, Cracked-up Katie. Katie is murdered shortly after Ingrid heads home, leaving her red soccer cleats behind. Ingrid isn't sure that the two men who are arrested actually committed the murder, so she becomes deeply entrenched in investigating what happened, while she tries to maintain her grades in math, get to soccer practice on time, learn her role as Alice in the Prescott Player's production of Alice in Wonderland, and sort out how to act around Joey, her potential first boyfriend and the police chief's son. Ingrid is an impressive heroine who learns that there are consequences to her actions and that her extremely busy parents and quirky grandfather care about her very much. This is the first young adult novel by Edgar Award nominated Peter Abrahams. His third person account is rich with red herrings and pop culture references. This works well as an audiobook because actress Mandy Siegfried hits just the right note in portraying Ingrid and her varied cast of supporting characters. Tension builds throughout the story as Ingrid's dread becomes palpable. The denouement is a masterful mix of derring-do and smart thinking. Although this mystery is solved, there is a feeling that a sequel might follow. A good choice for those who like Sammy Keyes and Nancy Drew mysteries.-Jo-Ann Carhart, West Islip Public Library, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Horn Book Review

Like her favorite detective Sherlock Holmes, thirteen-year-old Ingrid is keenly observant and stubbornly persistent. But when she learns she may have spotted a murderer, Ingrid feels as topsy-turvy as Alice in Wonderland (whom she happens to be portraying in a local theater production). Ingrid is a well-drawn character, and the Holmes and Alice comparisons are never overdone in this breezy mystery. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Impatient with mother for being late for her ride to soccer, Ingrid Levin-Hill, eighth-grade Sherlock Holmes fan and amateur actress, makes an impulsive decision to walk, inadvertently becoming a witness in the murder case of Cracked-up Katie, the weird lady in the rundown house on the wrong side of town. Ingrid is afraid to come forward with her first-hand knowledge, fearing her parents' reprimand for leaving the neighborhood. Landing the lead role as Alice in the town's playhouse production of "Alice in Wonderland," she becomes more curious about the playhouse's past performers and a possible connection to Katie's youth. As the police investigation gets further away from the truth and the wrong suspects are arrested, Ingrid takes increasingly daring risks to solve the case herself and eliminate the evidence she left behind indicating her own suspicious involvement. Abrahams has crafted a suspenseful page-turning drama complete with misleading clues and gutsy midnight escapades that make for thrilling intrigue right up to the culminating drowning-in-the-river scene. Ingrid's plucky, if not foolhardy, behavior will have readers both rooting and worrying for her simultaneously as she continues, like Alice, to fall deeper and deeper into the mystery's unfolding. Harrowingly absorbing. (Fiction. YA) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Down the Rabbit Hole An Echo Falls Mystery Chapter One Ingrid Levin-Hill, three weeks past her thirteenth birthday, sat thinking in her orthodontist's waiting room. You're born cute. Babies are cute. Not hard to guess why -- it's so everyone will forgive them for being such a pain. You grow a little older, and people say, "What beautiful hair," or "Get a load of those baby blues," or something nice that keeps you thinking you're still on the cuteness track. Then you hit twelve or thirteen and boom, they tell you that everything needs fixing. Waiting in the wings are the orthodontist, the dermatologist, the contact lens guy, the hair-tinting guy, maybe even the nose-job guy. You look at yourself in the mirror, really look at yourself, for the first time. And what do you see? Oh my God. Two orthodontists divided the business in Echo Falls: Dr. Lassiter, who didn't mind pulling a tooth or two to speed things along, and Dr. Binkerman, who liked to say he'd turn in his badge before sacrificing a single tooth. One kind of parents sent their kids to Dr. Lassiter. Ingrid, whose parents were of the other kind, was well into her second year with Dr. Binkerman, and behind her braces lurked the same jumble of teeth she'd come in with in the first place. And by the way, what stupid badge was he talking about? Ingrid flipped to another page of Seventeen. The glossy paper made an angry snapping sound. Flirting Tips: Where the Hotties Are In the weight room, of course. So it's important to get down with all that weight room terminology. Cut, ripped, reps, lats, pecs, curls, dips, jacked, juiced -- is this a weird lingo or what? Let's start with reps. Reps is simply short for -- "Ingrid?" Ingrid looked up. Mary Jane, the chairside assistant, stood in the doorway that led back to the operatories, the expression on her face a little exasperated, as though maybe she'd been calling Ingrid for some time. If so, Ingrid really hadn't heard. Reading -- it didn't matter what -- always did that to her. "All set," said Mary Jane. Ingrid followed her. There were two chairside assistants: Mary Jane, who wore her gray hair in a bun and always had circles under her eyes, and a younger one, who changed every two months or so. Mary Jane motioned Ingrid to the chair and raised it just as Dr. Binkerman strode in, flexing his surgically gloved hands. "And how's Ingrid today?" he said, looming into extreme close-up, his gaze locking on her teeth. Like Sherlock Holmes -- The Complete Sherlock Holmes had been sitting on her bedside table for years -- Ingrid was a habitual noticer of little things. Sherlock Holmes believed you could find out just about all you needed to know about people from little things; his method, as he told Dr. Watson more than once, was founded on the observation of trifles. Trifles were things like the single but surprisingly long white hair poking out of Dr. Binkerman's left nostril; the sleepy seed, lima bean colored, in the corner of his right eye; the pinprick-size blackhead on the end of his nose, a millimeter off-center. All these trifles added up to the glamorous Dr. Binkerman, hard-riding sheriff of the overbite range. And what was the question? How's Ingrid today? "She's fine," said Ingrid. "Open, please," said Dr. Binkerman. He peered inside her mouth, felt around in back, where the screws were, with his rubbery fingers. "Been wearing the appliance?" he said. "Uh-huh," said Ingrid. "Every night?" Dr. Binkerman drew back, looking at her whole face for the first time, fingers out of her mouth now so she could speak clearly ... Down the Rabbit Hole An Echo Falls Mystery . Copyright © by Peter Abrahams. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Down the Rabbit Hole by Peter Abrahams All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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