When the body of her mother, who disappeared five years earlier, is unearthed during the demolition of a restaurant formerly owned by her parents, 15-year-old Tasha Scanlan sets out to prove to the police – and herself – that her father is innocent of the brutal murder.

Norah McClintock, author of Mistaken Identity and Jack’s Back, throws in everything here. Besides the whodunit and a variety of likely suspects – even Tasha’s estranged Aunt Cynthia harbours a jealous grudge against her dead sister – McClintock includes a suicide attempt, several attempted murders, and a budding romance between Tasha and her best friend, Jace Bhupal. But McClintock handles it all skillfully, involving the reader in an intriguing search for the truth as Tasha and Jace follow lead after lead, encounter resistance and dead ends, and finally confront the murderer.

While more mature readers might take issue with the fact that two teenagers solve the five-year-old crime in such short order, most will enjoy the twists and turns of McClintock’s well-crafted plot. McClintock is less successful, however, in developing a strong sense of the victim and in setting up the initial situation that casts suspicion on Tasha’s father. At one point, Tasha describes her mother as a woman who was “always fair,” yet recalls vividly that her mother “resented her, that she hated being tied down by a child.” To ensure that witnesses are able to remember clearly the events that took place five years earlier, McClintock has Tasha’s mother leave her husband and daughter in the middle of a hurricane, which sends a tree crashing through a neighbour’s front window. The intensity of the memorable storm makes it unrealistic that Leonard Scanlan, a devoted father, would leave his 10-year-old daughter alone for hours while he drove around trying to figure out how he was going to manage without his wife. Despite these problems, this is a satisfying read that will keep readers turning pages till its conclusion.