Take an intriguing title, add a mystery, include a dash of danger, a bantering family, and a hate-love relationship with a horse, and you’ve got ingredients for a book that will please a wide-ranging audience. The Witcher, fairly named for its dowsing or divining-based plot, will hook young readers hungry for tales about the supernatural.

There’s a solid story behind the lure of the title. In this, Weir’s fifth mystery for pre-teens, 12-year-old Lion and his 14-year-old sister, Bobbi, are drawn into events related to a custody battle that their lawyer father is charged with resolving. At issue are the motivations of three applicants for the guardianship of Spud, a recently orphaned 12-year-old with the ability to “witch” or dowse for gold.

When his father has to travel to a Gold Rush ghost town to spend several days meeting with Spud’s would-be guardians, Lion has no interest in going along and tries, unsuccessfully, to talk his way out of it. His resentment increases when he learns his father has bought him a horse to take on the trip. Unlike Bobbi, who has her own horse, Lion doesn’t want one and has no intention of appreciating or bonding with his father’s surprise. By story’s end, however, Lion feels differently about both the trip and Rajah, the horse.

The Witcher is typical of its mystery genre. Plot, action, and climax are its strengths. Its sibling sleuths are a compatible, if overly imaginative, team who approach the case emotionally and help solve it more by chance than scientific detection. Weir relies considerably on verbal repartee to establish the family relationships and slips, only occasionally, into the too-cute trap. Lion, who’s cast in the role of younger brother and second banana at first, rises to become first banana. Regrettably, his metamorphosis comes at the cost of capable Bobbi’s diminishment. Once the real action starts, Bobbi (the girl) becomes increasingly reliant on Lion (the boy) in a manner disturbingly reminiscent of stereotypes we have known. The novel’s other child character is an interestingly absent one. Only four of the book’s 26 chapters are told from Spud’s perspective and it’s not until chapter 25 that the three young people meet face to face.

This set-in-British-Columbia mystery has the requisite giveaway clue for attentive readers, unlikely but suspense-building heroics, the villain’s explanatory boasting in the story’s dying moments, and the villain’s ever-so-satisfying expression of admiration for the young sleuth’s deductive talents. Mystery buffs, horse lovers, and summer readers will welcome The Witcher’s light but satisfying brush with danger.