My Sunshine Away - M.O. Walsh

One day Lindy Simpson cycles home from school and straight into a trap: someone is lying in wait for her, a wire strung between lampposts blocking the path. She is raped just yards from her front door. No one sees a thing and the perpetrator is not caught.

Her fourteen-year-old neighbour has loved Lindy from afar since they were kids. He becomes determined to solve the crime, investigating each suspect in the neighbourhood. But before the long, hot summer is out, it will become clear that the friendly community of Baton Rouge has much to hide. Behind the picket fences and rocking chairs on porches, behind the neighbourhood cookouts on sweltering afternoons, the vats of cold beer and cauldrons of spicy crawfish, lies a tangled web of darkness.

In his zeal to solve the crime, he stumbles across a sinister world he doesn't recognize, drawing ever closer to a terrifying denouement.