The Amazing Adventures of Aaron Broom

Hotchner returns to fiction more than 20 years after his last novel, Louisiana Purchase, with this slight but amiable layering of thinly disguised autobiography and Depression-era mystery. While 12-year-old Aaron Broom’s consumptive mother languishes in a sanitarium, he and his father skip from one St. Louis apartment to another just before the rent is due. One June day, Aaron waits outside while his father tries to interest a jewelry store in the watches he sells. The store is robbed and a man is killed just after Fred Broom enters, and Fred is detained by the police. Alone and homeless—the Brooms have been evicted again—Aaron enlists friends old and new to help him find the killer and free his dad, who is being held as a material witness in the unsolved crime. Much of the fictional Aaron’s life is familiar from King of the Hill, Hotchner’s 1972 autobiographical novel, and though the material was fresher there, this version is not without its old-fashioned charm.[em] (July) [/em]