A KILLING FREEZE

In her latest mystery, Hall adds some cogent points about love and acceptence to a tightly woven plot that's both exciting and thought-provoking. At 16, Clarie, raised by her father since her unmarried mother left, helps him run their snowmobile shop and the annual Winter Fest that brings business to their small Minnesota town. During the celebration, a well-loved neighbor is discovered dead from a blow to her head. When the chief suspect is found murdered by an ice pick and frozen into a block of ice intended for sculpture, the residents of Harmon Falls realize that they may have not one but two murderers among them. Clarie's unraveling of the mystery endangers her but also forces her to contemplate implications for her own life. Experienced mystery readers will guess half of the solution, but the other half is nicely Hitchcockian. Although Clarie's narration is uninspired, this is a suspenseful, workmanlike addition to YA mystery collections.