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Eleven-year-old Rob loves sitting in the cherry tree in his front yard, where he can spit cherry pits at the bedroom window belonging to Mrs. Calloway, the world's worst neighbor, and avoid the madhouse his home has become in the runup to his older sister's wedding. Then he sees a pair of hands shove Mrs. Calloway out the window to her death! But when he tries to tell people, nobody listens or believes him. Except the murderer...
Roberts' first book is basically Rear Window for pre-teens. I read this when I was kid and remember finding it very suspenseful. It still is once it gets going. The beginning/middle is a nicely written and amusing but fairly standard middle-grade comedy/mystery, with some implausibilities in terms of how impossible it is to get anyone to even let Rob finish a sentence when they know he saw Mrs. Calloway fall to her (rather gruesome) death. But once the murderer gets serious about getting rid of Rob, it becomes a cracking thriller that had me staying up late to finish it.
Content notes: One use of the r-word, the murder is unexpectedly disturbing/graphic for a middle-grade thriller, cats are injured/in danger (but they recover and are fine), a whole lot of spiders.
The Kindle version with the awful cover has been censored. The original book had the cat named S.O.B. This version names it Sonny, and cuts the explanation for the cat's name. S.O.B. is a major character, so it wouldn't surprise me if other elements of the book were altered too. Buy a used copy of the original book instead.
Roberts' first book is basically Rear Window for pre-teens. I read this when I was kid and remember finding it very suspenseful. It still is once it gets going. The beginning/middle is a nicely written and amusing but fairly standard middle-grade comedy/mystery, with some implausibilities in terms of how impossible it is to get anyone to even let Rob finish a sentence when they know he saw Mrs. Calloway fall to her (rather gruesome) death. But once the murderer gets serious about getting rid of Rob, it becomes a cracking thriller that had me staying up late to finish it.
Content notes: One use of the r-word, the murder is unexpectedly disturbing/graphic for a middle-grade thriller, cats are injured/in danger (but they recover and are fine), a whole lot of spiders.
The Kindle version with the awful cover has been censored. The original book had the cat named S.O.B. This version names it Sonny, and cuts the explanation for the cat's name. S.O.B. is a major character, so it wouldn't surprise me if other elements of the book were altered too. Buy a used copy of the original book instead.
