Underachiever Micheal finds that art imitates life a little too closely when his friend Tommy leaves school in a fit of anger and doesn’t return for days. The timing of Tommy’s disappearance coincides with the beginning of an English class unit on Crime and Punishment. Due to an unusual introduction to the book, Micheal and his friends Bones and Mixer start to believe that their English teacher, Mr. Haberman, is responsible for Tommy’s disappearance and possibly his death. As he reads the book, Micheal cultivates the idea of Haberman’s guilt. In violent Dostoevskyian fashion, the three boys take action against Haberman and are subsequently punished both by prison and guilt. Micheal’s practiced, smart-yet-slacker voice is authentic but also uneven; there are times when the author, not Micheal, is describing his surroundings. A few subplots involving meeting girls and the changing nature of the boys’ friendship add some realism but are ultimately unimportant. The boys’ immediate, assured suspicion of Haberman’s complicity in Tommy’s disappearance is frightening and realistic, but Tommy’s return and his reasons for leaving are a letdown, told and not shown. (Mystery. 15 & up)
Pub Date: April 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-545-09749-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2009
Only marginally intriguing.
In a remote part of Utah, in a “temple of excellence,” the best of the best are recruited to nurture their talents.
Redemption Preparatory is a cross between the Vatican and a top-secret research facility: The school is rooted in Christian ideology (but very few students are Christian), Mass is compulsory, cameras capture everything, and “maintenance” workers carry Tasers. When talented poet Emma disappears, three students, distrusting of the school administration, launch their own investigation. Brilliant chemist Neesha believes Emma has run away to avoid taking the heat for the duo’s illegal drug enterprise. Her boyfriend, an athlete called Aiden, naturally wants to find her. Evan, a chess prodigy who relies on patterns and has difficulty processing social signals, believes he knows Emma better than anyone. While the school is an insidious character on its own and the big reveal is slightly psychologically disturbing, Evan’s positioning as a tragic hero with an uncertain fate—which is connected to his stalking of Emma (even before her disappearance)—is far more unsettling. The ’90s setting provides the backdrop for tongue-in-cheek technological references but doesn’t do anything for the plot. Student testimonials and voice-to-text transcripts punctuate the three-way third-person narration that alternates among Neesha, Evan, and Aiden. Emma, Aiden, and Evan are assumed to be white; Neesha is Indian. Students are from all over the world, including Asia and the Middle East.
Only marginally intriguing. (Mystery. 15-18)Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-266203-3
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
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