Hiding in Plain Sight

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Adolescents who read Chasing Shadows may recall that, at the book’s
conclusion, Shelby’s best friend, Betts Thompson, was upset over
something. In Hiding in Plain Sight, the fourth instalment in the Shelby
Belgarden Mystery series, readers discover the cause of Betts’s
emotional state: her mother is suspected of, then charged with, stealing
the master disks for a newly developed software program—one
potentially worth millions—from the safe in the locked conference room
of the Little River branch of NUTEC. As office manager, Mrs. Thompson
had the sole set of keys to locks that were changed quarterly, and only
she knew the safe’s combination. That the conference room’s window
had been broken from the inside further suggests that only someone with
access to this area after working hours could be the thief.

Because of Shelby’s previous successes in solving crimes, Betts
persuades her mother to involve Shelby in attempting to identify the
real thief. Mrs. Thompson facilitates Shelby’s going undercover by
having her taken on as a summer student at NUTEC, where Shelby considers
the firm’s eight employees all to be suspects. What initially appears
to be a subplot involving an elderly character from Chasing Shadows
ultimately supplies Shelby with the meaning of a clue that has been
hiding in plain sight all along, thereby allowing her once again to
solve the crime.

Readers who have followed this series will recognize that Sherrard uses
much more character development than is usually found in the normally
plot-driven mystery genre. Recommended.