Death in the Afternoon

Hear No Evil #1

by Kate Chester, Leslie Davis Guccione, Scholastic Inc.

Sara Howell is smart, savvy, beautiful...and deaf. For Sara and all of Radley, things get frightening when the Shadow point Bridge collapses. 5 people die then one more: Sara's father, in a hit and run accident. Now someone is following Sara taking pictures. Her older brother, Steve, a rookie police detective, is receiving threatening messages. Sara Howell must find some answers or she could be the next victim.

Genres: Young Adult, Mystery, Disability, Fiction, Mystery Thriller

244 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Pen name of Leslie Davis Guccione.

Reviews

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a young teenager, I had most, if not all, of the books in this series, but never read them for whatever reason, and I think I ended up either packing them away or selling them at a yard sale to make room for adult titles on my shelves. Earlier this year, I found one of the later books in the series in my attic, and it was interesting enough for me to want to read the others if I found them again.
This is the first in the series, and reading back through my review of the other book, doesn't have the same flaws I found in that one. This one was actually rather believable, with deaf teenager Sara reeling from the untimely death of her police officer father in a hit and run accident while she was away at her boarding school. Following the funeral, Sara and her brother Steve, a rookie cop following in his dad's footsteps, have to get to know each other again, as Sara has been away most of the last couple years and her contact with home (the book was from the mid to late 1990s, so no social media) has been primarily through TTY phone calls with her dad. Having lost their mom when Sara was young, she refuses to go back to the boarding school for fear of something happening to Steve and instead enrolls in the same private high school that many of her summer friends attend.
When on a bike ride with 2 of her friends, they go past the place Sara's dad was killed, which is in a parking lot near a bridge that collapsed a few months ago and killed a bunch of people, and Sara's friend Liz suddenly gets upset with her for going there, not because of what happened to Sara's dad, but because Liz's father was involved in the bridge construction and the collapse has affected their family profoundly. The discovery of a note in her dad's study leads Sara to believe that perhaps there's a connection between the bridge collapse and he father's death, but Steve strongly forbids her from snooping and investigating on her own, and also wants her to distance herself from Liz for reasons he won't explain.
Although a main focal point of the story is Sara's deafness and how she and those around her address her impairment, it's only at the very end of the book where it plays a significant role in the storyline. I almost feel like Chester focused on it so much in order to give readers a strong taste of what Sara's world is like so that she can spend more time developing the suspenseful plots of future books without providing so much background info on Sara. That would be my main issue with the book, that the plotline involving the bridge collapse and whether Sara's dad's death was connected in some way was a somewhat weak story, and there were a lot of coincidental things that happened so that it could be contained nicely in the allotment of pages common to YA books of the time (this was before J.K. Rowling and her massive Harry Potter tomes).
All in all a good book. I found one other at the sale where I got this one, don't know if it's #2 in the series or not, just that it's definitely not the one I read earlier in the year. I'll read that one eventually and continue to look for the others if I can find them cheap or better yet, free at the library.

[Sarah Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting story, I'm not sure if I've ever read a book where the main character was deaf.

* Sara has been deaf since age 6 when she had meningitis. She's spent several years at a specialist boarding school for deaf people, but as her father has just died she has decided to stay home with the only member of her family left - her brother Steven.
* Sara is down near a bridge which recently collapsed and had to be rebuilt when her friend Liz gets upset. Her father was responsible for the building of the bridge and has been implicated in the accident - it may have been avoidable.
* Sara finds out that her father was investigating the problem with the bridge, and she believes that he may have been killed because of it.
* So, there's a photographer following Sara around who ends up dead, Sara finds a shelter near the bridge and thinks that it belongs to a man called Adam Street, whose brother died when the bridge collapsed.
* Sara goes on a steamboat party thrown by Liz's dad, and sees a conversation saying that someone is going to get killed. She's thinks it's Liz's dad, but then it turns out to be Steve, because the real criminal was the bridge inspector who okayed the bridge even though it had been constructed with dodgy materials.
* Sara ends up in the river, but Steve manages to catch the guilty parties.

[Daleine · Rating 5 out of 5]

16 year old , Sara Howell has just become an orphan and left in the Custody of her brother who has followed in his father’s footsteps and became a police officer. Sara is deaf which makes it a little hard as her brother struggles with sign language. Their father was killed in a hit and Run accident which remains unsolved Sara wants to find out how her father was kill but she is deaf. To make things worse, she is being followed.

[Melanie Scalera · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would say 3.5 stars.
I was thinking that, with enough pages left near the end, we wouldn’t really be left hanging at all; yet, I’m still not 100% clear on which of the 3 is the killer.

[Madame Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sara was an intelligent and resourceful girl.

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shadow Point Bridge collapses, killing five people and shocking a community. The collapse is deemed an accident, along with the hit-and-run which kills police officer Lt. Paul Howell. But there is something sinister going on in the shadows. Paul’s death leaves behind his two kids—Steve and Sara. Sara is still a teen, and has spent most of her life sheltered in Edgewood School for the Deaf. But beneath her lack of hearing is a keen mind, and she finds herself being drawn into the mystery of her father’s death as well as the mystery behind the bridge’s collapse. However, the closer Sara grows to finding the truth, the more she and her older brother are put at risk. Can she find the answers before it’s too late?


This book was a little slow, but enjoyable. Sara is such an interesting character, and her older brother is so adorable in his protectiveness: I couldn’t help but care about them both.

The beginning was a little confusing, as there was a lot of information being thrown at the reader and it was hard to separate the different events. Also, I feel like the reader was supposed to view the events as separate, just like the characters did, but considering how closely they were introduced to the reader… After that first chapter or two, though, the two events weren’t so intermixed anymore.

Also, with Sarah’s deafness… The book walked a very fine line between hitting the reader over the head with her deafness and with just having it be a part of her life. There was maybe once or twice I felt it was a little too much, but, for the most part, the balance was just right.

The level of mystery was just right for a young adult reader—not too hard for them to put the clues together, but hard enough it isn’t obvious.

Overall, it was an enjoyable read and I will be picking up the rest of the series.

[Nattie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sara got on my nerves, maybe in one of the other stories she'll be better. I didn't like the way it was written. I don't understand why the author decided to have Sara sign every thought in her head to herself. Hearing people sometimes say things aloud to themselves, sometimes they even hold short conversations, but they don't say every thought that pops into their head aloud when alone; there's a word for people who do that...crazy. When Sara is alone and has a thought, for some reason her fingers start flying, people sign to communicate with others, but since she's the one thinking the thought it seemed pointless in a book.
The repetitive dialogue also annoyed me. Someone will be talking, a good paragraph will be written, the writer would make it so that Sara didn't follow, like the person was either talking too fast or turned away. Sara would sign to them that she didn't understand, and then they would repeat the entire paragraph over again. This happened countless times, and is just a bad idea in a book, nobody wants to keep reading the same thing over and over. This is a book, not real life, so you have to approach it differently. Make Sara understand the first time or only have her not comprehend a couple times at the most.

The story itself grew tedious, and at times I wished that Sara would take a long trip under the river; perhaps forever. Writer's do need to be more creative when they have black characters. Keesha and Marcus, how tiresome are those names for blacks? Very.

[Sakura Koneko · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm usually not a fan of mysteries, but the premise of this book had me interested. I found it very unique that the author decided to make her 'detective' a deaf teenager. It makes the descriptions in the book very interesting and more in depth in some way, as the character has to see everything, instead of hearing it.

[Ashley P · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was one of my favourites when I was younger and holds up pretty well actually. The mystery is in depth and the descriptions of sign language were enough that even with my basic knowledge I knew Kate Chester was getting it right.

Sara Howell is a well formed character, and the plot is quick moving. I wish this hadn't gone out of print.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book that shows that just because you have a "disability", it doesn't mean you can't stop your dreams from coming true. A short, quick read that has suspense, drama, and action, all rolled into one.

[Shari · Rating 4 out of 5]

About a deaf girl who lives with her older brother because their parents were killed. Older brother in a policeman.

[Manroop Suthar · Rating 3 out of 5]

,

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

it was a very awesome book i couldnt put it down