COUNT THE DAYS

Summerfield's debut owes much of its charm to its saucy, wise- child narrator, 11-year-old Cassie Wade, whose school chum Margie Thoroughgood, ``the girl who had everything''—blond hair, big blue eyes, a developing bust, and a splendid, shiny silver bike—stepped into a green car and was never seen again, imparting terror to all the parents and a certain notoriety to the village of Upper Grisham. Mrs. Thoroughgood befriends Cassie—begins, in fact, to obsess about her—and when Cassie's dad is abroad and her remarried mum is not eager to deal with her, Mrs. T. invites her to move into Margie's old room—and dress in her dresses and ride her bike. Mr. Thoroughgood is away for a spell, perhaps permanently. Time passes: the police make little progress in the case; Mrs. Thoroughgood becomes more and more Margie/Cassie obsessed; and the villagers feud among themselves—first assigning Margie's abduction to Cassie's dad, then to his artistic Welsh boyfriend, then to the hapless village idiot—before Margie's body is found past the dell, and an old alibi breaks down. Splendid evocation of country schools, English landscape, tinkers, and village mores: Anglophiles will queue up for this one.