THE LAST PAYBACK

VanOosting (Electing J.J., 1990, etc.) takes a refreshingly unsentimental tack in this tale of a 12-year-old who sets out to get the whole story of her twin brother's death, and to avenge it as well. What really frosts Dorothea—or Dimple, as she insists on being called—is that no one will tell her how Dale died. She has to read it in the paper: He was shot accidentally while playing with a gun with their friend Ronnie. Dimple once considered Ronnie a candidate for marriage, but now, as sole surviving member of the Twin Protection Society (motto: ``Never delay a payback''), she knows what she has to do. In the meantime, there's the visitation to endure, then the funeral itself and all the condolences. Telling her tale in a present-tense, modern idiom, Dimple comes across as feisty, determined, broadly irreverent, and genuine—she's capable, even in her anger and grief, of wondering how undertakers prepare people who have been shot in the face (not that Dale was). Readers expecting the tragic tone of Bridge to Terabithia (1977) and similar books are in for a shock, but the experience of loss is not trivialized; it wells up beneath Dimple's narrative and comes out explosively when she confronts Ronnie, finds a second gun that his appallingly careless parents have left in the house, and demands the whole truth. VanOosting takes a real risk here, but carries it off, thanks to an irrepressible protagonist, a sturdy supporting cast, and a strong, affirmative finish. (Fiction. 10-12)