TIME AFTER TYME

This third installment of a series offers a mystery that resembles a game of Clue and relies strongly on cryptology—and a veritable school of red herrings.

Clarence Tyme, head of the library at Bellevue University, has been found dead after a fire. Accidental, say the police—but was it in fact murder? Precocious 10-year-old Irene “Reen” Penterson, who calls herself an investigative reporter, and her 9-year-old cousin, Joanie, don’t think Tyme’s death was an accident. Neither do two adults who happen to be amateur sleuths—Kathryn Frasier and her sister, Cece Goldman—after listening to the doubts of the Rev. Jim Whitefield. It all has to do with very cryptic messages left in the university chapel’s prayer box, short notes that quote Scripture and end with the admonition “God Remembers.” So the game is afoot. Who has a motive, and what secrets are hidden? Many faculty members are suspected. Also notable is that the ill-regarded head of the computer science department was run off the road on his bicycle and very seriously injured. Is there a pattern here? If this book has a target audience, it might be Christian cryptologists. Code-breaking has a lot to do with the story, and the tale is decidedly in favor of religion. In one scene, a nasty faculty member argues from what is clearly the position of a hubristic, agnostic academic, and readers will know what side they are supposed to root for—just one instance of heavy-handed preaching. Still, DiBianca’s motif of time, clocks, and watches—evident in her previous novels—is a superb gimmick, and the idea of two teams of smart female detectives working almost in parallel is equally clever. But many questions remain. For example, is the very qualified (and angry) professor Andrew Bellinger being denied tenure just so that he might be a suspect? And does he really think that an instance of cheating back when he was an undergraduate might get him fired? Bellinger is the most notable example of a red herring.

An engaging crime tale with four appealing sleuths.