L’Air Du Temps

Josefowicz (Ready, Set, Go) blends family drama with a crime story in her breezy if unbalanced latest. Zinnia Zompa, the novel’s intuitive 13-year-old narrator, grows up in a dysfunctional family of four, and often takes out her angst on her younger sister (“Being mean to Zenobia makes me feel amazing. It fills me with icy joy”). The story opens in 1985 with the murder of Mr. Marfeo, the accountant for her father Skeets’s costume jewelry factory, whose body is found in a Lincoln Mercury identical to one the Zompas had recently reported stolen. The men convicted of the murder are twin brothers who also worked for Skeets. Though the murder sets the stage for the plot, it feels tangential to the real story of Zinnia’s parents’ fraying marriage. When Pauline, her artsy and unfulfilled mom, airs a suspicion she shares with Zinnia about Skeets’s involvement in Marfeo’s killing, he defensively replies, “My fake beads aren’t good enough for you.” Unfortunately, the family’s fears about Skeets’s foul deeds never come to any kind of resolution. Still, Josefowicz provides plenty of rich period detail through the voice of her spunky heroine, who’s dejected, for instance, when she fails to pull off a Dorothy Hamill wedge hairdo. Fiends for 1980s nostalgia ought to seek this out. (Mar.)