Circled

The death of 14-year-old Macy LeGrange, who had “heart-shaped lips and ever-pink cheeks” and “possessed a laugh worthy of a jolly, self-assured woman,” is at the center of McAneny’s intriguing fourth entry (after Skewed) in her Crime After Time series. Macy was riding her bike when she was fatally struck by a car driven by her boyfriend Hoop Whitaker’s father, the town drunk in Beulah, S.C. The next day, Hoop disappeared. Twelve years later, Macy and Hoop’s former classmate Chloe Keyes, who works as a reporter, revisits the tragedy after a fire at the town’s general store leads to a dark discovery in the basement: not only was the store’s proprietor, Boyd Sexton, using it to manufacture meth, but a bloodstain and duct tape suggest that Boyd kept a captive there as well. Chloe fears the prisoner was Hoop. McAneny does a fine job maintaining suspense throughout. (BookLife)