KIRKUS REVIEW
From a much-honored pro, a disappointingly graceless tale, third in the Starbuck Family Adventures. The gang's off to the Southwest, where their father's to help in a river diversion project and twins Liberty and July stumble onto a 600-year-old murder and help put the spirit of a Native-American potter to rest. Wickedly radical environmentalists turn out to be greedy grave robbers, but the real crimes here are in the narrative: scattershot points-of-view; mixed tenses; choppy Native American dialogue; threads of plotting that go nowhere. Some sentences simply don't make sense--''Liberty's telepathic voice seemed to twinkle around the shape.'' As usual, Liberty and July, and their younger twin sisters Charly and Molly, communicate telepathically. They also ``telesqueal,'' ``telescream,'' telemutter,'' and ``telewhimper.'' Even the Bobbsey twins had more substance. (Fiction. 8-12)
