Vanishing Act (review)

Eighth-graders Stevie Thomas and Susan Carol Anderson, whose press credentials as up-and-coming sports reporters got them into the Final Four and up to their necks in sleazy college basketball intrigue (Last Shot, BCCB 3/05), have now gotten assignments at the U.S. Open tennis tournament, and their journalistic skills once again get back-burnered while they solve a crime. This time it's the disappearance of high-ranked Russian player Nadia Symanova, who is whisked away in the crowds en route to a match at an outlying court, possibly abducted by Russian agents who don't want her defecting and playing for the United States. It doesn't take Stevie and Susan Carol long to smell a rat—this is no political cabal but a straightforward case of greed, with the Symanovs and Nadia's agent faking the crime to get maximum publicity and a movie contract. This part of the mystery is wrapped up pretty efficiently, but there's a deeper problem left to plumb—whether Susan Carol's uncle, agent for two of Symanova's rivals, might himself be involved in the scandal. Stevie and Susan Carol continue to be a likable pair of teen detectives, well balanced in the skills they bring to bear in their investigations and reasonably adept at requisite buddy repartee. Feinstein continues to have a ball name-dropping, stirring real-life sports journalists and personalities into the fictional broth, and even recruiting a pair of characters from his adult mystery Winter Games to serve as the kids' New York guardians and journalist mentors during the Open. With only two sports down and so many more to go, readers can expect Stevie, Susan Carol, and their laptops to be back in the news soon.