In the Dead of Summer

Summertime and the living's uneasy for levelheaded English teacher Amanda Pepper (last seen in How I Spent My Summer Vacation). Not only has she reached a crossroads in her relationship with Philadelphia cop C.K. Mackenzie, but she has also been sentenced to teaching summer school at Philly Prep, where a series of assaults against minority students and faculty starts the session off badly. A black teacher's classroom is vandalized in an act that's clearly racially motivated; a Vietnamese boy is murdered in a drive-by shooting in front of the school; and Amanda's favorite student, April Tuong, disappears. As the number of incidents increases (eventually striking the English teacher, too), Amanda becomes convinced that the missing girl and the attacks are related, and that the culprit is connected with the school. Aside from a few instances of stiff dialogue, this outing is full of pleasures as the literate sleuth runs up against some all-American racists. The Anthony Award-winning Roberts gives Amanda an appealingly dry wit-perfectly suited for taking on bureaucratized political correctness and describing what it's like to stand in front of a roomful of less than motivated teenagers. (Sept.)