Review: Shadows of Doubt

Shadows of Doubt by Timothy R. Baldwin

It’s really difficult to write an authentic mystery featuring teenaged detectives, but you wouldn’t know it from reading Timothy R. Baldwin’s new novel, Shadows of Doubt. In the tradition of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, his four heroes catch the scent of some wrongdoing at their high school and nothing will stop them from ferreting out the truth and catching the criminals. The fact that at the same time they are acting to save the job of one of their fathers just adds urgency and helps us empathize even more with the teens.

 

The camaraderie and touch of romance in the group felt real, but what I really liked was that this did not devolve into a shoot-em-up style climax. Baldwin has thought through each step of the problem, and every element of both the teen-detectives’ investigation and their efforts to expose the truth felt credible to me. I’m looking forward to the next book in the series.