I went through a pretty good Joan Lowery Nixon phase when I was about twelve or thereabouts. Along with Lois Duncan , Ms. Nixon kept me well supplied with tense, easily digested mysteries about young girls who encountered the horrifying and the deadly on a regular basis. As I was in the process of expanding a bit on my Nancy Drew addiction, I basically ate them up with a spoon. I collected used copies of most of Nixon's books and, at one point, had quite a group of them on my shelf; now they've been whittled down to the most memorable, sentimental few. Of her mysteries I held on to Secret, Silent Screams , The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore , and The Dark and Deadly Pool . And while the first two are probably better crafted, more complicated tales, The Dark and Deadly Pool is my favorite because of its offbeat and lovable main characters--Mary Elizabeth Rafferty and her friend Fran or, as I like to call him--ManFran. Mary Elizabeth takes a summer job at the super ritzy Rid...