Recovering Dad: A Bianca Balducci Mystery - Hardcover

Sternberg, Libby

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1890862584 ISBN 13: 9781890862589

Publisher: Bancroft Press, 2008

Synopsis

It's Bianca Balducci's junior year in high school, and she's got more than enough on her plate―impending SAT scores, college admissions, and the mixed signals of sort-of-boyfriend Doug. But when she finds out her mother, widowed as long as Bianca can remember, plans to marry Officer Steve Paluchek, a longtime family friend, things get even worse very, very quickly―because Paluchek, according to Bianca's private-eye sister Connie, is the man responsible for the death of their police officer father. And so Bianca is pulled into her most personal case yet―learning, for the first time, who her father truly was, even as she tries to determine who killed him. Was it Paluchek? He does seem to have ties to the immigrant smuggling ring their father was investigating. Or was it Paluchek's partner? And can Bianca figure it out before an increasingly irrational Connie makes a fatal mistake? Recovering Dad is more than simply the third installment of the Bianca Balducci mystery series, and the best Bianca mystery to date.

About this title

About the Author:

A Baltimore native, Libby earned both a bachelor's and a master's degree from the Peabody Conservatory of Music and also attended the summer American School of Music in Fontainebleau, France. After graduating from Peabody, she worked as a Spanish gypsy, a Russian courtier, a Middle-Eastern slave, a Japanese geisha, a Chinese peasant, and a French courtesan that is, she sang as a union chorister in both the Baltimore and Washington Operas, where she regularly had the thrill of walking through the stage doors of the Kennedy Center Opera House in Washington, D.C. before being costumed and wigged for performance. She also sang with small opera and choral companies in the region. For many years, she and her family lived in Vermont, where she worked as an education reform advocate promoting school choice policies, contributed occasional commentaries to Vermont Public Radio, and was a member of the Vermont Commission on Women. Her first young adult novel, Uncovering Sadie's Secrets, was a finalist for the prestigious Edgar Allan Poe award from the Mystery Writers of America. The second in her Bianca Balducci mystery series, Finding the Forger, was released in hardcover in November 2004 (both were published as mass-market paperbacks by Smooch) and a third is set for release in 2008. Her debut adult novel, Loves Me, Loves Me Not (published under the name Libby Malin) was released in 2005 to critical acclaim. Her historical YA novel, The Case Against My Brother, received highly favorable reviews in 2007. Her adult novel, initially entitled Fire Me!, will soon be published, and movie rights have been optioned. She is married, with three children, and now resides in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Review:

This third installment in the Bianca Balducci mystery series finds its titular character struggling with family and boyfriend problems . . . Sternberg weaves a few too many daily-life details into the narrative; readers will have to wait till the action picks up with some slapstick comedy and an exciting chase scene. Through it all, however, Bianca comes across as a smart, spunky, and sensitive girl . . . and her story emerges as intriguing. --Kirkus Reviews

What strikes the reader most about this series is just how all-American girl-next-door Bianca is. So many mysteries written for YAs have characters that are so much more courageous and intelligent than their readers; Bianca is a girl her readers will find familiar, like them . . . The sisters Balducci operate frequently out of emotion, not exactly cool reasoning, but that makes them all the more believable to YA readers. --Kliatt

Young adults will be fascinated by brave Bianca, who packs more activities into a week than most teens need a year to complete (boomers need a decade). However, her prime effort is to help her normally wiser older sister from doing something insane and potentially deadly. Bianca struggles to understand Connie's motives in investigating Steve Paluchek s involvement in her late father s death, because Steve has always been nice to her, and because she does not really know her dad except from what her siblings and mom told her. In between sleuthing and saving her sister, Bianca worries about her SAT scores, the junior prom, and first love. In her latest Bianca case (see also Uncovering Sadie's Secrets), Libby Sternberg provides a very personal mystery for her teen sleuth to investigate. --Harriet Klausner (10 out of 10 stars)

Young adults will be fascinated by brave Bianca, who packs more activities into a week than most teens need a year to complete (boomers need a decade). However, her prime effort is to help her normally wiser older sister from doing something insane and potentially deadly. Bianca struggles to understand Connie's motives in investigating Steve Paluchek s involvement in her late father s death, because Steve has always been nice to her, and because she does not really know her dad except from what her siblings and mom told her. In between sleuthing and saving her sister, Bianca worries about her SAT scores, the junior prom, and first love. In her latest Bianca case (see also Uncovering Sadie's Secrets), Libby Sternberg provides a very personal mystery for her teen sleuth to investigate. --Harriet Klausner (10 out of 10 stars)

This third installment in the Bianca Balducci mystery series finds its titular character struggling with family and boyfriend problems . . . Sternberg weaves a few too many daily-life details into the narrative; readers will have to wait till the action picks up with some slapstick comedy and an exciting chase scene. Through it all, however, Bianca comes across as a smart, spunky, and sensitive girl . . . and her story emerges as intriguing. --Kirkus Reviews

About this edition

• Publisher: Bancroft Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1890862584
• ISBN 13: 9781890862589
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256