SAMMY KEYS AND THE HOLLYWOOD MUMMY

With doughty sidekick Marissa in tow, resourceful, fast-talking Sammy sets out for Tinsel Town, to pay a surprise visit to her wayward, star-struck mother, Lana. It’s a surprise all right: her mother, passing herself off as a 25-year-old, is living with 11 other aspiring actresses in the palatial home, and firmly under the thumb, of aging but legendary agent Max Mueller. The very morning after the young folks’ unwelcome arrival, one of those actresses is found dead—in circumstances that, to Sammy’s dismay, strongly implicate her mother. Or was Lana actually the intended victim? Max’s home, filled with Egyptian antiquities, makes a properly oddball setting into which Van Draanen throws a fine array of suspects and complicating side plots, from stolen jewels and a hidden burial chamber to a fiery young Jamaican housemaid’s appalling discovery that she is Max’s daughter. Sammy puts the pieces together just in time for a (literally) explosive climactic rescue, as she hurtles into a crowded, trendy restaurant to force the old salt-and-coffee purge down her mother’s throat to keep her from swallowing poisoned wine. Sammy’s sixth high-energy whodunit keeps up the breathless pace of its predecessors, and by the end, Sammy has gone a long way toward forgiving Lana for deserting her. (Fiction. 11-13)