Matt Lanchester, biking on a country road near his new home in Wales, believes that he was nearly killed after he experiences a supernatural accident with a phantom speeding car. This incident is identical to the real accident that left a boy dead on the same spot years before. Matt’s encounter with a crude shrine that bears the victim’s initials—the same as Matt’s—leads to further revelations: He feels a mystical connection between the victim, Martin Lloyd, and himself; and it seems as if Martin wants Matt to learn the truth about his death. There are several “lost boys” here—Martin, the roadside casualty, and a child who succumbed after losing his way on a mountaintop a century ago and whose death and his dog’s valiant efforts to find him have become the stuff of local legend. Matt’s lost, too: He’s trying to discover truths about the present by making sense of the past. He’s also navigating friendships, including a tenuous one with a pair of toughs who’ve wrongly accused an elderly, mentally confused townsman of being Martin’s killer. The author fairly successfully interweaves contemporary events with the past and reality with the mystical to frame a mildly engaging story. (Fiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: March 11, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-375-84574-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: David Fickling/Random
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2008
Readers fond of lightweight mysteries solved by spunky heroines will take to this fiction debut, though a heavy ballast of tragedy and near-tragedy keeps it low to the ground. Having used the discovery of an empty hunting cabin as an excuse to form a secret club, Iris and four friends spin news reports of missing carnival receipts and the (supposedly) accidental death of the cabin’s owner, Ol’ Man Hazard, into an exciting scenario involving hidden loot and murder. Then they find a cryptic rhymed clue that mentions treasure, which they take as a broad hint that they’re on the right track. The story is carried along on sad undercurrents: Iris, called “illegitimate” by another girl in the opening pages, learns that her parents weren’t married when her father was killed in the Korean War; her tough grandmother is rushed to the hospital with severe pneumonia; Iris sets fire to the cabin and nearly suffocates inside; and the reclusive Ol’ Lady Hazard, thought to be a witch and chief suspect in her husband’s death, turns out to be the sickly, abused widow of a cruel alcoholic. While the plot never develops a compelling pace, and the story’s lessons are laid out in a concluding book report on Silas Marner, some of the dialogue and set pieces show a promising authorial gift for comedy. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1999
ISBN: 0-8234-1467-1
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1999
Writing as “Holm & Hamel,” the authors open the case files of a feline James Bond. Following the assassination of his beloved human counterpart in the hideously secret MI9, well-bred James Edward Bristlefur finds himself shanghaied from London to New Jersey where, after a miserable spell in a cat shelter, he’s adopted by a family and dubbed, to his disgust, Mr. Stink. Though eager to escape in order to track down the agents of his erstwhile companion’s demise, Stink finds himself drawn to his new caregiver Aaron, a smart and sensitive fifth-grader with a major bully problem. So he puts his larger plans on hold in order to put paid to Aaron’s tormenter with the help of a quickly assembled network of local mice. The inside drawings don’t quite fulfill the promise of the noir cover illustration, but resourceful, self-assured Stink makes a beguiling narrator, against whom Bad Guys, two-legged or four-, plainly stand no chance. The closing revelation that his transatlantic flight was no accident makes a tantalizing lead-in to the next episode, due in October. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-06-052979-2
Page Count: 144
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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