A MYSTERY FOR THOREAU

Sixteen-year-old Oliver Puckle is an apprentice newspaperman in the sleepy little 19th-century town of Concord, Mass. Sure, Concord has its eccentric characters. That wacky Henry David Thoreau has gone to jail again for refusing to pay his taxes, and raggle-taggle teenager Louisa May Alcott wanders around half-starved but spirited in the homemade linen sacks her fiery prophet of a father makes himself. But when the town is shaken by the cruel murder of local madwoman Hetta, Oliver is determined to bring the killer to justice—and if he finds love with a beautiful out-of-towner along the way, so much the better. This posthumously published mystery is richly flavored if slow-moving. Readers who can plow through the dry and too-lengthy beginning—Oliver explains, in his extended brochure for Concord, “there are six warehouses, a bindery, two sawmills, two gristmills, and a powder mill”—will be rewarded with believably deep characters in a moody, entertaining period piece. (Mystery/historical fiction. 12 & up)