sheri colberg-ochs

Vacations, skiing, sledding, hot tubs, and other winter fun—this second book of the Sandy Beach series has it all! A winter skiing vacation takes teenaged Sandy and her friend, Forrest, and their two families to a ski resort in South Lake Tahoe, where in addition to having fun, Sandy ends up investigating an older woman’s near-fatal skiing accident.

Sandy Beach is a nearly normal eighth grader who lives in the fictional beach town of Rosa Beach, California. Sandy’s distinguishing attribute is her ability to “hear” the truth any time that someone is directly lying to her, a skill that frequently leads her down a figurative “slippery slope” into dangerous situations as an amateur sleuth.

After wiping out not long after the older woman in the same spot on a slippery ski slope, Sandy finds a unique key in the snow--one that she discovers goes to an expensive car—at which point she begins to suspect that the “accident” was not an accident at all. Finding that key, combined with some neighborhood sleuthing that involves her father, Forrest, and other couples staying in the same vacation area, convinces Sandy that she is on the right track, but she has to follow a series of clues before she is able to identify the main suspects in the woman’s attempted murder.

Throughout the story, Sandy finds strength and direction in surmising what she thinks Simone LeClerc, the fictional international spy, would do in a similar situation. Sandy also enjoys driving her older sister crazy simply by treating her nicely—which is a very unusual behavior for Sandy—resulting in some entertaining interactions between the siblings.

As is often the case, money turns out to be the “root of all evil” in this story as well. Luckily, Sandy is finally able to put two and two together to identify the guilty parties staying in a nearby condominium, but when she and her family are next on their hit list, will she survive long enough to bring them to justice?