THE GRAVEYARD GANG

Duffy, creator of such sturdy stories as Cleaver of the Good Luck Diner and more contemplative novels by ``Pieter Van Raven'' (The Great Man's Secret), rides roughshod over expectations. Sandy Prescott and her retired friend Agatha Bates (Missing; The Man in the River) are sidelined while readers meet wealthy, lonely Amy Abbott, who has lost her father in a car accident and her mother to temporary mental instability and chronic snobbishness. When Amy becomes friends with one of the small New Hampshire town's lesser lights, Bigmouth Jenkins, she keeps the connection secret. But when Bigmouth is murdered, Amy is a prime suspect; Sandy, Agatha, and other friends in a club known as the Graveyard Gang solve the case, making the real murderer crack under pressure (he also cracks up in a car). Amy's high-strung nature is over-explained with too many recaps of her past, while information about Agatha, Sandy, and the town is shoehorned in. The dialogue is stiff and drawn out with stultifying repetitions, and the mystery is bland and predictable; the only real shocker here is its clumsy presentation. (Fiction. 10-12)