THE LAST MAN'S REWARD

Albert and his four friends are living in company-owned apartments just until their parents find houses. When the boys acquire a rare and valuable baseball card, they decide to hide it in an abandoned mine; the ``last man'' in the apartment complex gets to keep it and sell it, if he chooses. Albert has a use for the money the card will bring: His coach, Mr. Rockwood, is facing mounting medical bills for the care of his desperately ill wife. There's nothing really new about the storyline, but Patneaude's talent, in Dark Starry Morning (1995) and here, is in taking familiar plots and rendering them without any unrealistic vilifying of the characters to maintain excitement. He shows that suspense is possible without such outright villainy, and that reading about good people who do right is just as satisfying as reading about bad people getting their just deserts. (Fiction. 9-12)