by Kristin Butcher ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 2009
After years abroad, 18-year-old Jessica’s returned to Vancouver Island, where she’s now plagued by nightmares about the week she left. In her dreams she’s a murderer, standing over the body of local simpleton Charlie. Charlie did vanish that week that 12-year-old Jessica left the country, and now she’ll do anything to prove that she isn’t—or is—the murderer. She narrates in the first person as, bit by bit and clue by clue, her memories of that week return. Although Jessica’s heavily expository amateur sleuthing is a little thin on narrative tension (even a confrontation with a homicidal maniac doesn’t create much in the way of drama), this is a perfectly pleasant puzzle. The plot could benefit from more padding to make character motivations more believable, but though there’s not much rich character development, it is an enjoyable and neatly tied-up mystery. (Mystery. 12-14)
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-897235-58-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Thistledown Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
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by Daniel Finn ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2010
Baz is an excellent thief. She has been since the beginning, when Demi found her as a tiny child and she came to live with him in Fay’s den of child crooks in an (perhaps frustratingly) unspecified urban slum. No one is as good at picking pockets as the innocent-looking team of Baz and Demi, and they’re content to be Fay’s favorite children. When Demi steals a glittering ring from an uptown lady, they fall into a lengthy chain of betrayal and corruption. Spies within their own gang are the least of their problems; the ring belonged to the chief of police’s wife, and both the police and the mob are after them. Trusting anyone is dangerous, but Baz doesn’t want to end up like Fay and Demi, who trust no one. Lavish details of the hellish environment, from mud flats that drown the unwary to the festering garbage mountain on which enslaved children pick trash for the mob, derail the adventure’s forward momentum, slowing it to a crawl. What ought to be a thrilling chase drags, despite the charming, streetwise heroine. (Fiction. 12-13)
Pub Date: April 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-312-56330-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Chelsea Green
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2010
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by Lois Metzger ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1999
A girl’s interest in family history overlaps a coming-of-age story about her vestigial understanding of her mother after death, and her own awareness of self and place in the world. Junior high-school student Carrie Schmidt identifies strongly with the missing girls of 1967’s headlines about runaways. Carrie’s mother is dead and she has just moved in with her grandmother, Mutti, who embarrasses her with her foreign accent and ways. Carrie’s ideal is her friend Mona’s mother, a “professional” who dresses properly, smells good, and knows how to set out a table; readers will grasp the mother’s superficiality, even though Carrie, at first, does not. Mutti has terror in her past, and tells Carrie stories of the Jews in WWII Vienna, and of subsequent events in nine concentration camps; these are mined under the premise that Carrie needs stories for “dream” material and her interest in so-called lucid dreaming, a diverting backdrop that deepens the story without overwhelming it. Mutti’s gripping, terrible tales and the return of an old friend who raised Carrie’s mother when she was sent to Scotland at age nine awaken in Carrie a connection to her current family, to her ancestry, and, ultimately, to a stronger sense of self. This uncommon novel from Metzger (Ellen’s Case, 1995, etc.) steps out of the genre of historical fiction to tell a story as significant to contemporary readers as to the inhabitants of the era it evokes. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-670-87777-8
Page Count: 194
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
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