A fast-paced, plot-driven mystery without enough substance to sink your teeth into.
Three Canadian teenagers are thrown into a dangerous mystery involving a murder, drug dealers, and hate crimes.
Fifteen-year-old Dominic Cantrell is focused on baseball, getting his license, the school play he’s (reluctantly) acting in, and spending time with his two best friends, Farhad Shirvani and Mia Stark. That is, until Farhad’s family’s drugstore is burgled and vandalized in what is clearly a hate crime, and the girl Dom is dating turns out to have a complicated connection to a recent murder. These events push Dom into the role of a young Sherlock Holmes, tailing a car at night, recruiting his friends to observe suspicious interactions, and landing himself in extremely dangerous situations. The story moves along quickly, but this pace comes at the expense of details such as robust character development and descriptions. Farhad’s dad is from Pakistan, but this information doesn’t appear until a third of the way into the book (Dom and Mia are white). Deeply important conversations about racism, hate crimes, and depression arise, but the characters discuss the subjects only shallowly. Some of the teenspeak feels inauthentic and cliched. Ultimately, the novel deals with a very adult mystery disappointingly, merely scratching the surface of what could have been a more nuanced, believable story.
A fast-paced, plot-driven mystery without enough substance to sink your teeth into. (author interview) (Mystery. 12-14)Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2025
ISBN: 9780889957510
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Red Deer Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
Without that frame, this would have been a fine addition to the wacked-out summer-camp subgenre.
Survival camp? How can you not have bad feelings about that?
Sixteen-year-old nerd (or geek, but not dork) Henry Lambert has no desire to go to Strongwoods Survival Camp. His father thinks it might help Henry man up and free him of some of his odd phobias. Randy, Henry’s best friend since kindergarten, is excited at the prospect of going thanks to the camp’s promotional YouTube video, so Henry relents. When they arrive at the shabby camp in the middle of nowhere and meet the possibly insane counselor (and only staff member), Max, Henry’s bad feelings multiply. Max tries to train his five campers with a combination of carrot and stick, but the boys are not athletes, let alone survivalists. When a trio of gangsters drops in on the camp Games to try to collect the debt owed by the owner, the boys suddenly have to put their skills to the test. Too bad they don’t have any—at all. Strand’s summer-camp farce is peopled with sarcastic losers who’re chatty and wry. It’s often funny, and the gags turn in unexpected directions and would do Saturday Night Live skits proud. However, the story’s flow is hampered by an unnecessary and completely unfunny frame that takes place during the premier of the movie the boys make of their experience. The repeated intrusions bring the narrative to a screeching halt.
Without that frame, this would have been a fine addition to the wacked-out summer-camp subgenre. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: March 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4022-8455-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In an unnamed country (a thinly veiled Philippines), three teenage boys pick trash for a meager living. A bag of cash in the trash might be—well, not their ticket out of poverty but at least a minor windfall. With 1,100 pesos, maybe they can eat chicken occasionally, instead of just rice. Gardo and Raphael are determined not to give any of it to the police who've been sniffing around, so they enlist their friend Rat. In alternating and tightly paced points of view, supplemented by occasional other voices, the boys relate the intrigue in which they're quickly enmeshed. A murdered houseboy, an orphaned girl, a treasure map, a secret code, corrupt politicians and 10,000,000 missing dollars: It all adds up to a cracker of a thriller. Sadly, the setting relies on Third World poverty tourism for its flavor, as if this otherwise enjoyable caper were being told by Olivia, the story's British charity worker who muses with vacuous sentimentality on the children that "break your heart" and "change your life." Nevertheless, a zippy and classic briefcase-full-of-money thrill ride. (Thriller. 12-14)
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-75214-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: David Fickling/Random
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
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