Dead and Buried by Anne Cassidy

The Murder Notebooks 4. Bloomsbury, 2014. ISBN 9781408815533.
(Age: 13+) Murder. Assassination. Thriller. After the horrible events in Butterfly grave, the third in the Murder notebook series, Rose is keen to get on with her life. She makes a break with Joshua, her stepbrother, but everything is disrupted when Police Officer Henry Thompson calls to tell her that the body of a young girl has been found buried in the bottom of the garden where she and Joshua once lived. With her mother Kathy and stepfather, Brendan, implicated in the murder, Rose once again joins forces with Joshua to clear their parent's names.
This is a thrilling finale to the series as Rose and Joshua try to work out who has murdered the girl who was buried in the garden. As they follow clues to this murder, they also have to work through their own complicated feelings for each other and the quest to find their missing parents. Cassidy raises some interesting questions about the morality of the actions of Kathy and Brendan, and whether they and the other members of the group should go about assassinating people, even if they are disgusting criminals.
There is plenty of action, a mystery within a mystery, and a clever tying up of all the details. This is a satisfying conclusion to an interesting murder mystery series and fans of the series are sure to enjoy how it all ended.
Pat Pledger