Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery.

Two friends set out to solve the years-old mystery of a murder, testing their friendship and placing them in danger, in this creepy thriller by suspense master Mary Downing Hahn.

A pair of thirteen-year-old boys investigate the unsolved theft and murder that took place in the old house one boy's family has just moved into. Their quest takes them to the highest and lowest levels of society in their small Maryland town, and eventually to a dark and derelict amusement park where someone will go to any length to shut down their investigation for good.

Themes of adjusting to a new town, navigating complex friendships, and resisting a bully are deftly explored in this eerie page-turner.

Published
2009
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6/10

Mary Downing Hahn is apparently a fairly popular and award-winning author of horror and suspense books for children in the U.S. She specializes in ghost stories. I read Closed for the Season, in which 13-year-old Logan moves with his parents to a new town and meets Arthur. Arthur tells him all the most important things about the small town, including that an elderly woman was murdered in Logan’s house and money was stolen from the local amusement park before that. So the boys set out to solve these unsolved mysteries.

For an adult, the story isn’t very exciting, nor is it really a mystery. It’s a bit of a “Middle Grade Cosy Crime” story. There were no ghosts in this one, so maybe I’ll read another book by this author that has some.

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