Author: April Henry
Publisher: Macmillan
Rating: worthy
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.
Errata:
p75 "A Lexis" should be "Alexis".
p80 "cellophone?" "cellophane" maybe?
P149 "Her mouth water…" "Her mouth watering" maybe?
I enjoyed this novel a lot. It was well-written, with sufficient technical detail to make it sound authentic (to me anyway!), yet not with so much that you require a Tom Clancy official barf bag to deal. April Henry has some twenty or so novels out there for various ages, so I plan on looking up some more of her work. I did find some typos, which to me is really inexcusable in this day and age of electronic word processors and spell-checkers, but a lot of advanced review copies seem to be that way for some obscure reason. April Henry should ask me to beta-read her next novel!
Alexis, Nick, and Ruby are teens in high school who have volunteered and are in training for Search and Rescue. They're called at school one November afternoon to help find a missing autistic boy. The boy is found, but not by them. What they do find in their part of the forest, is the dead body of a young woman who has evidently been strangled. And the killer is watching as the EMTs and police show up. He takes a shine to Ruby - a natural redhead. I wonder why?
The three teens are quite different superficially, but have connections below the surface. Ruby is bordering on obsessive about crime scenes and serial killers. Nick likes to draw pictures his teachers think are disturbing. He has fantasies of military service, taking after his departed dad. Alexis is living with her mom, surviving on disability and foodstamps, and her mom is off her meds, paranoid, yet paradoxically behaving like a particularly irresponsible child.
Talking of irresponsible, this was refreshingly not one of those novels which has kids acting unilaterally without involving the police. The interactions between the kids and the law enforcement officers were well thought-out such that they felt realistic and responsible, whilst still giving the teens sufficient motive and room to act independently without them looking stupid for not involving the cops. It was nice to see an author demonstrate (for those less capable) how this can be done!
Something (which is initially unspecified) has happened between Alexis and Ruby, meaning they no longer hang out together, but all three decide they need to help catch this murderer, who is stepping up his game. He picks on homeless kids, since they're such easy targets when he approaches them pretending to be from a help organization, and handing out free gifts of gloves or chap stick. Some of the things he hands out contain GPS trackers, so he can sit in his office, or in the warm comfort of his home, and play his sick game of stalking his potential victims electronically.
There's a really oddball bit where an out-of-shape wannabe hiker tries to hike a trail that's only 1.3 miles, but who gives up before he finishes, and turns round to head back, but who then gets lost(!). The SAR team has to find him, but we’re told that it takes them an hour to get to him. I found that completely bizarre! It's not explained why it takes them an hour to hike less than a mile, but it does say that there are three routes, so the team splits into smaller groups to cover all three. It's possible, therefore, that this particular group took the long way around, but if that's the case, why didn’t one of the other two teams find him first? This just struck me as confusing at best and poorly written at worst. Actually, not even poorly written. I was impressed by the quality of the writing in this novel, so I should say poorly-planned instead.
Overall, however, I really enjoyed this novel and I recommend it. It has good characters who behave both naturally and intelligently, strong females, and a decent plot. It was a great thrill and a good ride, and it's well worth the reading. I liked how it was written, how the characters behaved and interacted, how there were plenty of red herrings, but not stupid red herrings, and how the plot slowly gathered around the real perp, with plenty of excitement and unnerving bits here and there.
