The Last Goodie

Schwandt's first novel is gripping, unarguably professional, although marred to a degree by irrelevant incidents. (Some of these, such as a passionately committed teacher's inveighing against our shoddy public-school system, would make an absorbing book on their own.) The plot concerns Marty Oliver, age five when an intruder kidnaps his beloved sitter, Stacy Davis, from the Olivers' home. She is never found and the town is in an uproar over the crime, for Stacy was special. The girl at 15 wasin one of the author's felicitous phrases""tall, slender, pretty and quickly becoming beautiful,'' a good student and star on Southwestern High's track team. Marty's guilt affects his growing years, regardless of assurances that he had been a little child, unable to defend Stacy. After 10 years, he's still trying to remember anything that would give his father, a journalist, a clue to the girl's attacker. Like Stacy, Marty is on his way to a championship as a runner, when he finds a long-lost letter hinting of dangerous secrets the kidnap victim had recorded in a diary, carefully hidden from her parents. Marty's father and the track coach help the police chief to dig up the diary, in which they find stunning facts that lead to the dramatic denouement. (12up)