Cold Flat Junction (Emma Graham Series #2)

From Barnes & Noble

Obsessed with the "accidental" drowning of an adolescent girl some 40 long years ago, Emma Graham is determined to unravel the mystery of the drowning and the unsolved murders that wind back to it. But Emma's unstoppable quest for answers will take her to places no 12-year-old girl should go -- not even a child as daring, irrepressible, and intuitive as Emma. In the marvelously intriguing Cold Flat Junction, Martha Grimes's quirky, thoroughly captivating young heroine continues the pursuit she began in Hotel Paradise -- tracking down old secrets in the cobwebbed corners of a once-fashionable resort hotel in search of the long-buried truth about two mysterious deaths that will help her make sense of her own strange life.

From The Critics

Grimes brings every corner of Cold Flat Junction to vivid life.

Baltimore Sun

Grimes brings every corner of Cold Flat Junction to vivid life.

Dallas-Fort Worth Morning Star

...the story never really stops in Cold Flat Junction. Those who visit Grimes' fictional town won't be disappointed.

Knoxville News-Sentinel

Though some may disbelieve Emma's intelligence as too adult, these are skills honed by solitary children. Grimes get that - and everything else - just right.

New York Times Book Review

A superior writer.

Newark Star Ledger

If Grimes' style seems off-putting at first, give it 20 pages and you'll be hooked.

Raleigh News & Observer

[Cold Flat Junction] is a masterful, character-driven exploration of small-town secrets and their surprisingly dire consequences.

Richmond Times Dispatch

Emma Graham [is] one of the most realistically drawn children in contemporary fiction.

San Diego Union-Tribune

...a thoroughly delightful reading experience.

San Jose Mercury News

A master of nuance, Grimes brings every corner of Cold Flat Junction to vivid life.

From The Critics

Mystery writer Grimes takes a break from her popular Richard Jury series with Cold Flat Junction, a well-crafted whodunit filled with small-town secrets, complex relationships and clever humor. This winsome coming-of-age story features Emma Graham, the precocious twelve-year-old girl readers first met in Hotel Paradise. An independent child with a quick, inquisitive mind, Emma is stuck in a resort town with her mother when she sets out to solve a local murder. Emma gets unexpected help from the townspeople, who begin telling her things they might not reveal to an adult. Unfortunately, Emma sometimes sounds too much like a grownup; the action slows as listeners consider how a kid could have such a keen understanding of human nature. Narrator Bernadette Dunne is youthful and energetic as Emma, perfectly capturing the child's cynicism, confusion and sassiness.
—Rochelle O'Gorman

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Grimes made her reputation with her Richard Jury mysteries, but she has also successfully produced character-driven psychological fiction. This smartly written, quietly paced sequel to her 1996 hit Hotel Paradise revisits precocious 12-year-old sleuth Emma Graham, working in her family's fading resort hotel on Spirit Lake in smalltown America. Setting this narrative a week after the close of its predecessor, Grimes chronicles Emma's investigation of three family murders. Ben Queen has recently been released from prison after serving 20 years for the murder of his wife, Rose Devereau Queen. Fern Queen, Rose and Ben's daughter, who "had always been touched in the head," is found shot, and Ben is once again the prime suspect. Emma knows that Ben could not have committed either murder. Unfortunately, she can't tell the sheriff without letting on that Ben is hiding in the old Devereau house. Emma is aware that all these events began 40 years ago with the mysterious drowning death of 12-year-old Mary-Evelyn Devereau, who was being cared for by her three aunts, Rose's half sisters. And who is the spectral "Girl" who keeps appearing and disappearing? Skillfully constructed as a smart, independent child learning to be a self-aware adult, Emma has a talent for indirect routes, self-fulfilling lies and pumping her unwitting sources for a great deal of information. Her meditations can occasionally make slow reading, and she tells her story in almost as roundabout a way as she investigates, but the effect is surprisingly satisfying. Like Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine, Grimes obviously enjoys straying from more traditional mysteries, though under her own name. Fans of Grimes's Richard Jury series undoubtedly read her in both incarnations, and the sophisticated jacket design should help lure general readers to this well-wrought narrative. (Feb.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

KLIATT

Emma Graham, a 12-year-old sleuth, is baffled that no one seems concerned about mysterious murders in her small town. She is tenacious and thorough in her investigation. Emma manages to interview key witnesses as well as relatives and even those who could provide an alibi for the key suspect. As she goes about this job, she also works at the local hotel as a waitress (her mother is a cook). Emma has a vivid imagination: when her mom and another woman hit the road for a trip to Florida, Emma creates her own Florida in the hotel. Of course Emma finds key evidence and forces the local sheriff to realize exactly what did happen in both murders. Despite the risk to herself, Emma proves indomitable. Grimes writes a fun (if at times a bit slow and confusing) tale with a lively, engaging protagonist. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2001, Penguin Putnam, New American Library, 432p., Holab-Abelman

Library Journal

The intrepid 12-year-old sleuth Emma Graham is back in a sequel to Grimes's Hotel Paradise. When 38-year-old Fern Queen is shot just days after her father, Ben, is released from prison, Sheriff Sam DeGheyn suspects him. Emma, certain that the current murder is somehow related to the drowning death of Fern's cousin Mary-Evelyn Devereau 40 years earlier, sets out to prove Ben Queen's innocence. While the mystery lacks both credibility and suspense, Emma's domestic life is entertaining. Left to run her family's hotel while her mother vacations in Florida, the plucky, philosophical Emma creates exotic drinks for her 91-year-old great-aunt, Aurora Paradise; reluctantly agrees to play the deus ex machina in her brother Will's offbeat production of Medea; and hides mushrooms in the meatloaf of the mean-spirited hotel patron, Miss Bertha. Recommended for public libraries. Jane la Plante, Minot State Univ., ND Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

It's been five years since prodigious preteen sleuth Emma Graham debuted in Hotel Paradise (1996), but this equally appealing sequel from Richard Jury's creator (The Lamorna Wink, 1999, etc.) is set only a week later. Not that it hasn't been an eventful week. Ben Queen, who served 20 years for shooting his wife Rose to death only to be accused of killing his daughter Fern shortly after his release from prison, is still on the run; Sam DeGheyn, the kindly sheriff of La Porte, Maryland, is still equally incapable of catching him; and Emma, part-time waitress at her family's moldering hotel, is still firmly convinced of his innocence. In order to vindicate Ben, Emma has to go back not merely a generation to Rose's death, but two generations to the drowning of Mary-Evelyn Devereau, niece of Rose's three half-sisters. Feeling an uncanny kinship with Mary-Evelyn, who died at her own age of 12, Emma is still darting off from the Hotel Paradise to search long-abandoned houses for clues and seek out ancient witnesses, some of them seeming equally abandoned, for evidence. Her interrogation tactics are formidably ingenious. Ferried around town by a skeptical cabbie, she asks polite questions on behalf of nonexistent relatives, pretends she's interviewing locals for a class project, and even purchases 50 pounds of fertilizer in the hope of establishing Ben's alibi for Rose's murder. Making the best of her mother's absence in Florida, Emma returns to the hotel only often enough to taint a fussy boarder's meals in ever more inventive ways and join rehearsals for her brother Will's musical production of Medea—a choice that's more appropriatethanshe knows—en route to a finale thatwill show just how fatal her resemblance to Mary-Evelyn can be. A tour de force whose cobwebby little mystery, less sequel than remake, is fleshed out with dozens of memorably Dickensian grotesques.