A VOICE IN THE WIND
by Kathryn Lasky
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)