Fell down

Searching for clues to the death of his best friend, Dib, Fell stumbles upon the diary of Lenny Last, who had vanished more than twenty years before, and a ventriloquist's evil dummy, who might play a key role in murder

Grade 7-12-- This third novel about John Fell ( Fell 1987, Fell Back 1989, both HarperCollins) opens in the Edwardian Room of the Plaza Hotel. Keats has taken Fell there so she can learn why he walked away from the Gardner School, leaving exams and graduation behind and unfinished. Fell, distraught over the death of his best friend, Dib, in a car accident, needs to make sense of the events that led also to the death of one Lenny Last, a washed-up Vegas comedian/ventriloquist and former Gardner student. By so doing, Fell gets caught up in a 28-year-old mystery. The telling of Fell Down is distinctly different from the earlier books: in alternating chapters, the two stories--past and present--are told by Fell and "The Mouth," whose identity is not revealed until the end. This device is jarring at first, but it eventually serves up an intriguing read as the events merge to create a satisfying whole. There is sure to be another book about Fell around the corner, for he returns to the newly coed Gardner School and Sevens House to find April, the sister of the love-of-his-life, Delia. A must purchase for libraries in which the other two books about Fell are popular. --Laura McCutcheon, St. Catherine's School, Richmond, VA
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Though Kerr may have stumbled in teenage sleuth John Fell's second outing, Fell Back , she is back on track and running strong in this absorbing, smoothly crafted third book of the series. Wisely, the author employs the same characters, themes and eastern Long Island setting that made Fell such a delicious read. Keats, Fell's neurotic blueblood ex-girlfriend, plays a pivotal role in this tale of a dead ventriloquist, his maniacal dummy and his missing best friend, the slightly bent heir to a major fortune. Fell's narrative is in counterpoint to that of "The Mouth," which turns out to be the dummy belonging to Lenny Last, the ventriloquist who caused the death of Fell's school chum Deem in a suicidal car crash. Investigating Last's and Deem's deaths brings Fell back to his old haunts at Gardner prep school and the Hamptons, where Keats lives and Fell had a truncated love affair with mysterious Delia Tremble. Along the way the reader is treated to ventriloquists' lore plus the same sort of pithy social commentary and quirky characterizations that enlivened Fell . With a few threads left untied and the appearance of Delia's look-alike sister April at story's end, Kerr leaves the door wide open for Fell's return. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The third book about Fell finds him in a funk as he tries to deal with the auto-accident death of best friend Dib. Platonically reunited with old flame Keats, Fell returns to Gardner School to pick up his belongings, as well as contemplate his future, when he's plunged into a byzantine mystery involving the other driver in the crash, has-been ventriloquist Lenny Last. It emerges that Lenny was once a member of the Sevens, the exclusive club of which Fell is an ambivalent part, as was Lenny's roommate Nelson Plummer--whose strange disappearance is as legendary as Judge Crater's. As Fell begins to unravel the dark solution to the 20-year-old riddle, he also starts to come to terms with his own life--only to be dealt another knockout blow in the last chapter. Fell's story is told alternately by Fell and by ``The Mouth,'' entries from a journal that may have been written by a character's alter ego. Both voices are pithy and as rhythmically involving as the sharply witty shadow dance that constitutes the plot. Another entry in this clever, original series seems promised; it will be welcome. (Fiction. 12+) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.