The strapline on the cover of this book is, ‘Who can you
trust when wickedness returns?’ Who
indeed?
A follow-on to the exciting historical thriller for
teenagers, ‘Wickedness’ which came out in 2011, ‘Deceit’ sees the return of the
sinister Doctor unbound by time or mortality as he desperately searches to
steal and create the artefacts and people necessary to his achieving complete
immortality and world domination. This Doctor
is sexually alluring and quite prepared to kill as he straddles the centuries
and the globe in his quest.
But this isn’t his story; it’s the stories of modern-day
teenager Clare, with her messed-up family and the siblings she has to protect,
and the stories of C17th teenagers Margarat and Martha, their loves and their
children, French teenage twins in each of those eras, and even the story of
Egyptian teenager Nefertaru, young priestess at the Temple of Sekhmet whose
mummy has set the evil lose in London to bring plague and fire, and modern-day
plagues too.
What is special about these novels, and I think particularly
‘Deceit’, is the way that it defies the usual teenage-read genres. This is a book that is rich and generous in
what it offers readers. I suspect it
will take readers into kinds of reading they may not have tried before because
it packages so many story types together.
It brilliantly combines fast-paced twisting thriller with fascinating
historical context and characters, the social realism of the fractured modern
family, boy-girl romance, along with teenagers coping with parental love for
children. It includes sex and murder
because that is what the story calls for.
Tautly written, the pace keeps going all the way through, and
you have to keep your wits about you in order to keep track of all that is
going on.
It might indeed surprise you with who does, and doesn’t, turn
out to be trustworthy!
Return to REVIEWS HOMEPAGE
2 comments:
Now that sounds like a real page-turner, Pippa! And good to hear about a book with such an interesting historical whirl - good for these days when tv seems to be always playing with history.
And having characters from today so involved with the past at different stages of history, and even different continents, it really brings out the point that young people are young people whatever their circumstances. All within, as you say, 'a whirl' of exciting story.
Post a Comment