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THE BLUEST BLOOD by Gillian Roberts Kirkus Star

THE BLUEST BLOOD

By

Pub Date: March 1st, 1998
Publisher: Ballantine

If Neddy and Tea Roederer lived in Boston, they wouldn't have to speak to anyone but the Cabots and the Lowells. In Philadelphia, though, their millions can't insulate them from contact with Amanda Pepper's spineless colleagues at Philly Prep, where their adopted son Griffin attends school, or from the Moral Ecologists, the censorship mavens who'd be ludicrous if they weren't so dangerous. Now that Amanda has talked the Roederer Trust into settling a nice piece of change on the Philly Prep library, Neddy and Tea are on a collision course with Moral Ecologist loudmouth Rev. Harvey Spiers--a collision course that begins with the hanging of an effigy and leads up to the real thing. As the Philly Prep staff and the Moral Ecologists (""Don't pollute minds!"") trip over each other in their haste to embarrass themselves, and Amanda and her favorite cop, C.K. Mackenzie, sort out the zanies from the murderers, the unlikely friendship between two lonely boys--Spiers's stepson Jake Ulrich and Griffin Roederer--emerges as the heart of this story. It's a strong heart that, together with Roberts's unusually firm mystery-mongering and pointed use of clues, makes Amanda's eighth case (The Mummers 'Curse, 1996, etc.) her finest hour yet.