Down the Rabbit Hole

by Peter Abrahams

~Welcome to Echo Falls, Home of a thousand secrets, where Ingrid Levin-Hill, super sleuth, never knows what will happen next. Ingrid is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or at least her shoes are. Getting them back means getting involved in a murder investigation rivaling those solved by her idol, Sherlock Holmes, and Ingrid has enough on her plate with club soccer, school, and the plum role of Alice in the Echo Falls production of Alice in Wonderland . But much as in Alice's adventures down the rabbit hole, things in Ingrid's small town keep getting curiouser and curiouser. Her favorite director has a serious accident onstage (but is it an accident?), and the police chief is on Ingrid's tail, grilling her about everything from bike-helmet law to the color of her cleats. Echo Falls has turned into a nightmare, and Ingrid is determined to wake up. ~

While I can tell that this book is well-written and probably a good mystery, I don't generally read mysteries. They aren't my thing. I spend half the book yelling at the main character, "Just go to the police already!" It's possible that I'm too pragmatic to just relax and enjoy the work. As for Rabbit Hole in particular, not only was the book taking too long to go somewhere, it wasn't going where I wanted it to go. However, I take responsibility for that fact and will recommend it to mystery fans because I sense that there's some quality here. The protagonist, Ingrid, is well-drawn, intelligent and likable. Abrahams takes time to detail Echo Falls and the quirks of its inhabitants, making the setting come to life. It would have been nice had he developed more of a sense of mystery earlier on because I wasn't intrigued enough to stay with the story and finish it.

One more comment... What's with the name "Cracked-Up Katie"? Do people actually give nicknames like that anymore? And wouldn't it be something less corny like... oh say... "Crazy Katie"? Just my two cents.