SKULLDUGGERY

After their successful sleuthing in Snatched (2006), Brian Bain and Roni Delicata are ready to solve more mysteries in their little town of Bloodwater. Fred Bloodwater, a real-estate developer, is planning on building condominiums on Indian Bluff, but Brian and Roni believe a local professor’s assertion that there are important Native American remains in caves on the bluff. When the professor is beaten and left unconscious, the intrepid detectives are on the case. Who was responsible for the assault? The professor’s ex-fiancée? Fred Bloodwater’s cute (but stupid) teenage son? A skunk-cabbage-obsessed botanist? Moreover, Brian is sure he has seen the Native American remains, in the form of a now-missing skull the professor called “Yorick.” This occasionally uneasy merger of realism and a more over-the-top Scooby Doo/Indiana Jones–style adventure can be jarring. Nevertheless, the adventures of these meddlesome junior sleuths, with the mystery’s tension cut by gentle humor, are quite entertaining. (Fiction. 9-11)