Author:   Abad, José Florencio and Mendieta, Esperanza
Title:   Siete días de julio
Publisher:  Everest    Publication Date: 1999
Pages:   118
Paper price: $22.50    ISBN:  84-241-5976-4
Type: Fiction      Grade level(s): 7-12
Translation notes:  Not a translation

Reviewer:  Mark Hall, San Francisco Public Library
Comments:
Three Spanish high school students team up to solve the mystery of a missing relative.  Madrileños Josemi and Sabrina end up at the same summer work program, in an unexciting provincial small town, for very different reasons.  Josemi isn't there because he's interested in the archeological dig they're working on; he's determined to find out what happened to his aunt, who disappeared in this town twenty years earlier. Meanwhile, Sabrina is there only because her parents sent her.  She's thrilled to have Josemi's mystery to solve, and soon they team up with a local boy, Coleman, who is the technical expert at the local radio station.  Told in the alternating voices of these three characters, the story develops from a baffling disappearance to a far more unsettling truth.  The dialog and characters are well done, with realistic banter and interesting scenes at the radio station, where the no-nonsense station manager presides and the presenter of the psychic program adds some foreshadowing and suspense to the story.
I couldn't get too excited about a mystery involving a missing aunt who has no character development to draw the reader in.