Mystery Month

May is Mystery Month over at Booklist Magazine and they've compiled their Top 10 Crime Fiction for Youth list for 2012. Below are select reviews for books on their list—to read multiple reviews for titles on the full best book list subscribe to CLCD.

The Case of the Deadly Desperados

Caroline Lawrence

            The Case of the Deadly Desperados is a first-person narrative of P. K. Pinkerton. Twelve-year-old P. K. recounts his/her (the gender is never clearly revealed) adventures through writing on ledger paper. The setting of 1862 Virginia City, Nevada, provides the perfect backdrop to the wild adventures. P. K. is an orphan who on his/her twelfth birthday experiences the shooting death of his/her foster parents. P. K. flees the scene in possession of a deed that will grant him/her a large area of land. Because of this, P. K. is on the run from Whittlin’ Walt and his gang. While assuming various disguises to evade Walt, P. K. encounters an interesting variety of people in the Wild West. He/she meets a Soiled Dove (prostitute), spends time in an opium den, and learns to read nonverbal cues from poker players. The book is quick paced and engaging, moving from one escapade to the next without ever slowing down. Although not presented in expansive detail, the allusions to prostitution, the opium den, and the killing of P. K.’s foster parents at the book’s start all suggest that this book should not be read by the youngest of readers. Overall, Lawrence has written a gripping book that leads its way nicely in becoming part of a larger series. 2012, Putnam/Penguin, Ages 11 to 15, $16.99. Reviewer: Ursula Adams (VOYA, April 2012 (Vol. 35, No. 1)).

ISBN: 9780399256332

Chopsticks

Rodrigo Corral

            If a picture is worth a thousand words, this venture in visual storytelling contains volumes worth of detail. Photographs (some featuring posed actors), news clippings, screen shots, character-drawn sketches, and artfully arranged everyday artifacts (tickets, concert bills, backpack contents), aided by occasional superimposed lines of dialogue, present a love story between Glory, a piano prodigy whose mother died nine years ago, and Francisco, an artistic, lonely Argentinian immigrant who chafes at the condescension he encounters at his new school. Their romance is told as an extended flashback, framed by urgent news reports of Glory’s disappearance eighteen months after the two met. As Glory’s fragile mental state becomes increasingly clear, however, it throws the very nature of the story into question, and a clever, intricate buildup of visual clues (including a neat overarching musical metaphor related to Glory’s repeated playing of “Chopsticks” in concert as a symptom of her breakdown) suggest that Francisco may not exist at all. The layout is dynamically composed, making the most of a single image per page; photos are saturated with color and light, and print excerpts set against backgrounds of varying textures and colors sustain visual interest. Each page conveys not just information but emotion; romantic scenes are warmly luminous and suffused with hope, while dark or lonely moments are shadowy or overexposed. Narrative clues are scattered throughout, but only the most observant readers will catch their implication on the first readthrough. For those willing to pore over each page and weigh each detail, though, this ambitious, beautiful work satisfies both intellectually and emotionally. 2012, Razorbill, Grades 9 to 12, $19.99. Reviewer: Claire Gross (The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, April 2012 (Vol. 65, No. 8)).

ISBN: 9781595144355

The Girl is Murder

Kathryn Miller Haines

            1942 New York City; 15-year-old Iris Anderson must cope with a new family dynamic and living arrangement. Her widowed father, a former naval officer who lost a leg at Pearl Harbor, has decided to return to his private investigator business. They now rent rooms instead of having their own apartment, and Iris attends a public high school instead of a private girls' school. Iris decides to help her father with his investigations, especially the disappearance of a hunky boy she met at school. She struggles with the questions of whom to trust, who really is her friend, and, in turn, what kind of friend she is. Haines paints a gritty portrait of early 1940s NYC from the Lower East Side to Harlem, from uniform to zoot suit, from rationing to sharing, from poor to rich. This is a real page-turner with a "film noir" feel; definitely not Nancy Drew! Highly Recommended. 2011, Roaring Brook Press, Ages 13 to 18, $16.99. Reviewer: Esther R. Sinofsky (Library Media Connection, October 2011).

ISBN: 9781596436091

I Hunt Killers

Barry Lyga

            In order to catch a killer, one must think like a killer, and nobody knows how to do that better than Jazz Dent. His father is one of the most notorious serial killers in the world and taught Jazz everything he knew about the art of killing. Now his dad is in jail, and all Jazz wants to do is suppress the urges his dad passed on to him and be a normal teenager, but when a new serial killer shows up in Lobo’s Nod, Jazz is obsessed with catching him. In order to face the killer, Jazz must first confront his own demons and decide which side he is really on. Lyga brilliantly combines the feel of a true crime story with mystery, adventure, and psychoanalysis in this intense story of a different kind of family bond. It is a classic “whodunit” with the added intrigue of describing murders in great detail, while not becoming overly gruesome, as well as the police work involved in solving a crime, so it feels like a true crime novel instead of fiction. The characters are especially believable, and the reader will be drawn in by their motivations and actions. Jazz’s inner struggle to understand his compulsions to both save and hurt people will captivate readers into wanting to know which path he will ultimately choose. This story will appeal to a wide variety of older teen readers, especially guys, and will make an excellent addition to any library serving mature teens. 2012, Little Brown, Ages 15 to 18, $17.99. Reviewer: Blake Norby (VOYA, April 2012 (Vol. 35, No. 1)).

ISBN: 9780316125840

Wonderstruck

Brian Selznick

            The separate stories of two youngsters, a boy in 1977 and a girl in 1927, finally come almost miraculously together. The boy’s tale is told at first in engrossing text; the girl’s only in black and white double-page textured drawings. We meet Ben living unhappily in Gunflint Lake, Minnesota with his aunt and uncle and family, having lost his mother in a car accident. He is deaf in one ear, but after a lightning strike accident he is completely deaf. Finding clues to a father he never knew, Ben takes off for New York City to find him. In 1927 a girl named Rose lives isolated by her deafness in Hoboken, New Jersey, looking yearningly across the river at New York City where her mother is a famous actress. She too runs away. Themes run through both stories: parents, deafness, storms, stars, and the American Museum of Natural History. Some coincidences must be accepted, but the happy ending is both believable and satisfying. Selznick provides detailed, naturalistic, black pencil drawings that create gray, almost photographic scenes of buildings and people with a sense of mystery. We are swept into the powerful visual story as the point of view zooms in or out. The provocative narrative, similar in format to the author’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret, leaves the reader with much to think about and illustrations to peruse repeatedly. 2011, Scholastic Press, Ages 9 to 12, $29.99. Reviewers: Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz (Children's Literature).

ISBN: 9780545027892