The Martini Effect: A Little Maine Murder

Continuing her heroine's life story, Morrison's fifth entry in the Little Maine Murder series (after Champagne and a Gardener ) places self-possessed 12-year-old amateur sleuth Elizabeth Lamb Worthington at St. Augustine's, a coed boarding school on Maine's Mt. Desert Island. On her first day there, Elizabeth Lamb hears of the accidental death of a member of the men's crew, Jay Colket, before the term began. Jay and a friend had smoked marijuana before going scuba diving, a practice they had followed before. This time, however, Jay apparently lost his mouthpiece and drowned. Elizabeth Lamb picks up bits of information suggesting that Jay might have been murdered. When the boy's politically connected parents insist that the police reopen the case, Elizabeth Lamb again encounters Lt. Buzzie Higgins, who asks for her help. The precocious, plucky heroine's latest case is a deductive puzzler likely to please devotees of old-fashioned mysteries that eschew sex and excessive violence. But Morrison's prose, largely devoid of style and grace, could put readers in mind of Elizabeth Lamb's predecessor, Nancy Drew. (Nov.)