Welcome to Echo Falls. Home of a thousand secrets, where Ingrid Levin-Hill, super sleuth, never knows what will happen next.

Ingrid is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or at least her shoes are. Getting them back means getting involved in a murder investigation rivaling those solved by her idol, Sherlock Holmes, and Ingrid has enough on her plate with club soccer, school, and the plum role of Alice in the Echo Falls production of Alice in Wonderland. But much as in Alice's adventures down the rabbit hole, things in Ingrid's small town keep getting curiouser and curiouser. Her favorite director has a serious accident onstage (but is it an accident?), and the police chief is on Ingrid's tail, grilling her about everything from bike-helmet law to the color of her cleats. Echo Falls has turned into a nightmare, and Ingrid is determined to wake up. Edgar Award-nominated novelist Peter Abrahams builds suspense as a smart young girl finds that her small town isn't nearly as safe as it seems.

"The charming 13-year-old heroine of Abrahams's (A Perfect Crime, for adults) murder mystery will guide readers through its many twists and turns. Ingrid Levin-Hill, who, like her hero Sherlock Holmes, is 'a habitual noticer of little things,' has just been cast as the lead in Alice in Wonderland when she finds herself in a different role — murder detective. The corpse is that of 'Cracked-Up Katie,' whom Ingrid encountered when she attempted to get from her orthodontist to soccer practice — and wound up five miles away in the poorest part of Echo Falls. The next day, the local paper states that Katie's body was found soon after Ingrid left her house; realizing she's left her red soccer cleats behind, Ingrid breaks in to retrieve them. But she's not the only one in Katie's house that evening. Ingrid's sleuthing is complicated by a budding romance with the police chief's son, and the dialogue crackles with wit — Ingrid gets the best lines. It's disquieting, however, that big brother Ty, the football star, blackens Ingrid's eye in anger without repercussion, and many of the supporting characters are more fully developed than her nuclear family; the town's newspaper editor, her curmudgeonly Grampy and even Cracked-Up Katie come across as more convincing. And dropped threads abound (e.g., will Grampy stave off developers by populating his farmland with endangered eastern spadefoot toads?) Readers who stick with this intelligent, if overstuffed novel will be clamoring for answers — and more of Ingrid. Ages 10-up." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Ingrid Levin-Hill lands the plum role of Alice in the Echo Falls production of Alice in Wonderland. Things in Ingrid's small town soon keep getting "curiouser and curiouser." Then events in Echo Falls turn into a nightmare, and Ingrid is determined to wake up.

Peter Abrahams is the author of sixteen crime novels, including End of Story, Oblivion and the Edgar Award-nominated Lights Out, as well as the Echo Falls mystery series for young adults, the first of which, Down the Rabbit Hole, was also nominated for an Edgar Award and won the Agatha. He lives on Cape Cod.