Two young sleuths solve a mystery in this witty, swiftly paced tale.
In this fourth installment of a middle-grade adventure series, a teenager arrives in a Colorado city and encounters a string of challenges.
It’s 1898, and Ruby Oliver and her Pa move from rural Cripple Creek, Colorado, to citified Colorado Springs. Pa is a simple, loving man but has trouble expressing his feelings. Ruby’s milliner stepmom is gentle and sympathetic to the moody teen, who’s blossoming into an inquisitive and independent young woman. She tells Ruby that age 13 is full of “ups and downs,” and the teen quickly discovers this. Pa taught Ruby about the great outdoors and took care of “all her schoolin’ ” in their rustic log cabin close to the mountains. Now, it’s summer vacation, and Ruby is sorely in need of a diversion. Her homespun but crafty Pa orders her to “stop shilly-shallying and find something to do,” so they purchase a buggy. With her two pet donkeys, Maude and Willy, Ruby enters the livery business. This gives her freedom of movement and expands her horizons as well as exposing her to the comings and goings of the townsfolk and strangers. (Pa works hard, giving Ruby plenty of time to roam unsupervised.) Roy O’Rourke, a teen from Cripple Creek, has run away to Colorado Springs to escape an abusive father and moves in with his Aunt Agnes, an odd bird who awakens Ruby’s unsettled interest. Roy encounters Ruby, becomes her partner, and the story begins to gallop. A crime wave hits Colorado Springs when the Bat Bandits (they wear black capes) swoop into town. Ruby’s ears prick up and she begins to add things up. Mixed into the plot just a bit is the novel Dracula. Ruby reads the book, and it makes her a little uneasy and incites her imagination. A former teacher, Oswald skillfully uses the horror classic to enhance the plot and mood and to perhaps arouse young readers’ curiosity about literary technique without detracting from the action. The story moves quickly (readers will have to hold the reins tightly) as the crime-solving duo chases leads. The humor is plentiful and folksy, and Ruby and Roy make a great team. Hopefully, they’ll be together again soon.
Two young sleuths solve a mystery in this witty, swiftly paced tale.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73775-480-0
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Burro Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Ideas abound, but when the focus shifts from Thomas' determination to take the measure of the house (literally and...
Dies Drear? Ohio abolitionist, keeper of a key station on the Underground Railroad, bearer of a hypercharged name that is not even noted as odd. Which is odd: everything else has an elaborate explanation.
Unlike Zeely, Miss Hamilton's haunting first, this creates mystery only to reveal sleight-of-hand, creates a character who's larger than life only to reveal his double. Thirteen-year-old Thomas Small is fascinated, and afraid, of the huge, uncharted house his father, a specialist in Negro Civil War history, has purposefully rented. A strange pair of children, tiny Pesty and husky Mac Darrow, seem to tease him; old bearded Pluto, long-time caretaker and local legend, seems bent on scaring the Smalls away. But how can a lame old man run fast enough to catch Thomas from behind? what do the triangles affixed to their doors signify? who spread a sticky paste of foodstuffs over the kitchen? Pluto, accosted, disappears. . . into a cavern that was Dies Drear's treasure house of decorative art, his solace for the sequestered slaves. But Pluto is not, despite his nickname, the devil; neither is he alone; his actor-son has returned to help him stave off the greedy Darrows and the Smalls, if they should also be hostile to the house, the treasure, the tradition. Pluto as keeper of the flame would be more convincing without his, and his son's, histrionics, and without Pesty as a prodigy cherubim. There are some sharp observations of, and on, the Negro church historically and presently, and an aborted ideological debate regarding use of the Negro heritage.
Ideas abound, but when the focus shifts from Thomas' determination to take the measure of the house (literally and figuratively), the story becomes a charade. (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 1968
ISBN: 1416914056
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1968
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones.
An exhilarating summer marked by death, gore and fire sparks deep thoughts in a small-town lad not uncoincidentally named “Jack Gantos.”
The gore is all Jack’s, which to his continuing embarrassment “would spray out of my nose holes like dragon flames” whenever anything exciting or upsetting happens. And that would be on every other page, seemingly, as even though Jack’s feuding parents unite to ground him for the summer after several mishaps, he does get out. He mixes with the undertaker’s daughter, a band of Hell’s Angels out to exact fiery revenge for a member flattened in town by a truck and, especially, with arthritic neighbor Miss Volker, for whom he furnishes the “hired hands” that transcribe what becomes a series of impassioned obituaries for the local paper as elderly town residents suddenly begin passing on in rapid succession. Eventually the unusual body count draws the—justified, as it turns out—attention of the police. Ultimately, the obits and the many Landmark Books that Jack reads (this is 1962) in his hours of confinement all combine in his head to broaden his perspective about both history in general and the slow decline his own town is experiencing.
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones. (Autobiographical fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-37993-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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