Missing Persons #2: Chocolate Lover - Softcover

M. E. Rabb

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0142500429 ISBN 13: 9780142500422

Publisher: Speak, 2004

Synopsis

Sam and Sophie's new case involves trying to find the lost love of Professor Leo Shattenberg, but the girls also want to find out if the gentleman sharing their last name might be their cousin, without revealing their own identities.

About this title

About the Author

M. E. Rabb is a fresh voice in teen fiction. She has had numerous stories published in Seventeen magazine as well as in the Atlantic Monthly, Zoetrope, and the Chicago Review.

Reviews

Grade 6 Up-This second entry in the series continues the Shattenberg sisters' adventures. Sophie is in high school and Sam is working as an assistant to Gus Jenkins, the local private eye. The girls begin a new missing-persons case when they meet Leo Shattenberg, a retired professor who shares their uncommon last name. Leo asks for their help in tracking down a woman who's been missing since 1947 in order to return a painting to her. The plot frequently veers off course so suddenly that Sophie seems to be forever explaining odd and illogical turns of events. However, even though the narrative is a little contrived, it's also sweet, wry, and entertaining. Adults are on the sidelines; it's Sophie, Sam, and their friends who solve the mystery. This lighthearted novel is bound to please mystery fans and reluctant teen readers alike.
Jane Halsall, McHenry Public Library District, IL
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Reviewed with M. E. Rabb's The Rose Queen.

Gr. 7-10. The first titles in the new Missing Persons mystery series introduce teen orphans Samantha and Sophie Shattenberg, sisters who flee their Queens, New York, home after their father's death to escape their stepmother, who intends to abscond with the family money and ship Sophie off to boarding school. A few felonies later (fake documentation; funds illegally transferred from their father's account), the girls settle into a new life, and new identities, in tiny Venice, Indiana. In The Rose Queen, the girls become prime suspects in the disappearance of an obnoxious local beauty queen and crack the case to clear their names. That success turns into jobs with the local PI, and in Chocolate Lover, they connect art stolen during the Holocaust with its missing owner while exploring their own family tree. Although Rabb indulges in a few small-town stereotypes, she creates breezy, compelling mysteries that can be read as stand-alone titles. More interesting, though, are the deeper identity struggles of the likable sisters, who cherish their New York Jewish roots even as they try to live (and fall in love) while masquerading as young, midwestern gentiles. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Speak
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0142500429
• ISBN 13: 9780142500422
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192