Secret at Summerhaven - Hardcover

Grade 5-8 While filming a home movie, three cousins accidentally film a drug sale. Soon the drug smugglers are after them, stealing their car and causing them to be set adrift in the ocean. The cousins manage to defeat the smugglers with the help of Muskrat Robbins, the town ne'er do well, and an idea they borrow from a mystery story. The action frequently strains credibility: at one point Skeeter, the youngest cousin, temporarily restrains a drug smuggler by sucking his tie into a vacuum cleaner; later, Lindy, the teenage girl cousin, retrieves a drug drop by swimming through water so turbulent that the rescue squad won't take a boat out in it. Alhough there are enough twists of plot to maintain readers' interest, the outcome is predictable. Even those readers who have been carried along by the mystery will find the final scene so cloying as to negate any belief in characters and story that they might have had. Muskrat makes a complete change from greaser to ``clean cut'' explaining, ``I saw that I had turned into an obnoxious bully who tried to intimidate people'' and the cousins' older friend, ``Beach Bum,'' explains that he had moved to the island because he ``had lost faith in the human race'' but after meeting the cousins decides to write a mystery series based on their exploits. While this book may appeal to series mystery fans, it will hardly be a step up. Louise L. Sherman, Anna C. Scott School, Leonia, N.J.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.