A teenager pining for adventure in his sleepy town finds more than he bargained for when he pursues a jewel thief in Holt’s YA mystery novel.

In 1958, Lincoln Moss Jr. leads a happy if undramatic life; soon to graduate high school, he works part-time at a local gas station and is saving money to buy his first car. He loves his girlfriend, Katie—she has a “heart of gold,” one example of the army of clichés deployed by the author, whose prose traffics heavily in shopworn platitudes. Lincoln also seems a bit bored by his slow-moving life—he is “longing for adventure and my little town seemed like an unlikely place to find it.” To commemorate Katie’s 18th birthday, he buys her an expensive jade ring (she’s about to head off to college, and he frets anxiously about the consequences of her absence). While the ring is being sized, it is stolen from the jewelry store, a loss Katie experiences with anguish. Lincoln decides to undertake his own investigation of the crime and quickly comes to suspect a “leggy blonde” who visited his gas station in a flashy gray Corvette. Holt’s novel chronicles Lincoln’s sudden discovery of both freedom and adventure, and the maturation that comes with it. The never-fully realized backdrop of the story is the absence of Lincoln’s father, whose own adventure—his participation in World War II—ended in death. The drama is never fully captivating; there is something antiseptic about Holt’s writing, even when describing a scenario in which Lincoln’s life is threatened. The entire narrative has a tender, dream-like quality, bereft of grittiness or real darkness, brimming with sentimental sweetness. One can’t help but feel that it was written to be easily digestible for a younger audience, and to be blandly inoffensive for a broader one.

A saccharine tale lacking any dramatic verve.