THE CREEK

A band of preteens finds itself the target of ghoulish mischief after a neighborhood bad boy returns home from a stint in juvie. Penny Carson is 12 and happy to run wild with the boys, building forts, riding bikes, and playing softball. But when an increasingly macabre series of incidents focuses attention on Caleb Devlin and threatens to restrict the kids’ movements, Penny finds herself questioning her friendships, capabilities, and sanity. Holm very effectively creates a suburban subdivision, complete with its own smug neuroses, and has an uncanny ability to evoke the parallel society of its children, whose allegiances and power struggles are enacted with deadly seriousness. With its minivan moms, this clearly has a contemporary setting, but it also has a distinctly antique feel: these kids enjoy a freedom and autonomy almost never found in these days of highly structured lives. The thriller aspects, though, are on target, ratcheting up the tension with leisurely precision—sure to find a ready audience. (Fiction. 10-14)