Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, illustrated by Chris Priestley - review by Dawn Finch

First the blurb...

AND THEN THERE WERE SHOTS
Everybody
ran,
ducked, 
hid, tucked
themselves tight.

Pressed our lips to the
pavement and prayed
the boom, followed by 
the buzz of a bullet,
didn't meet us.

After Will's brother is shot in a gang crime, he knows the next steps. Don't cry. Don't snitch. Get revenge. So he gets in the lift with Shawn's gun, determined to follow The Rules. Only when the lift door opens, Buck walks in, Will's friend who died years ago. And Dani, who was shot years before that. As more people from his past arrive, Will has to ask himself if he really knows what he's doing.

I read a lot of books - hundreds of them every year, but it's not often that a book leaves me speechless. I read Long Way Down shortly after it was published in January, and it has taken me this long to review it because it was hard to find the words. In that time I've been sharing it with everyone I meet and telling them that if they only buy one book this year, it should be this one.

There have been a few verse books hit the shelves over the last few years, and some of them have been excellent, some have not. It is not only a difficult format to master, but it is also incredibly difficult to sell and to get young readers to take a chance on. So many readers feel that poetry is not for them, and feel excluded by the format. Long Way Down is the book to challenge that.

Reynolds' free and fluid verse is engaging and captures the reader from the opening lines. He writes with a living ease that feels real, and honest. This is the voice of youth, and anger, and it speaks directly to the reader. This is not the sound of pretentiousness or of fusty academia, this is the voice of fear, and hate, and sadness and grief. Will is real and in this verse we know him, and we understand him, and through this we understand the plight and situation of the young people who walk in his shoes.

Detail - art by Chris Priestley

The book is a powerful package with the verse supported by Chris Priestley's characteristically superb illustrations. Darkness oozes from scratchy images of Will's life. Frozen moments of memories, wisps of the past and the horrors of the present. Inky flashes of bullets, guns, body bags and fragments of the life of a boy who has been swept away into this terrible world.

This is not only a great book and a great read, it is also one of those very rare things - it is an important book.

Long Way Down is written by Jason Reynolds and illustrated by Chris Priestley
Published by Faber and Faber
ISBN - 978 0571335121

Reviewed by Dawn Finch, author and librarian.
www.dawnfinch.com
@dawnafinch

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MURDER MOST UNLADYLIKE by Robin Stevens; Review by Penny Dolan

This review was inspired by a twelve-year-old girl, waiting at the bookshop counter, and enthusiastically clutching a book to her school blazer. When I asked, she proudly showed me the title: MURDER MOST UNLADYLIKE by Robin Stevens, and her enthusiasm is why I came away with a copy for myself (and for my bookshelf for occasional young visitors.) 

MURDER MOST UNLADYLIKE, a well-paced and well-plotted crime novel is set in the 1930’s. This title takes place at Deepdean School for Girls, echoing the traditional jolly-lacrosse-sticks boarding school stories of that era. Stevens recreates a world of bells, bun-breaks, tuck-boxes, dorms, pranks and pashes, along with spinsterish teachers and the general social obligation to be “a good sport”.

The plot is, basically, one of those "who done it" puzzles, familiar to readers of Agatha Christie. The novel nips along, full of suspense, bravery and crime-solving but I felt that a particular strength of the book is that Robin Stevens does not hide the bleakness of boarding school life, nor the racism and snobbery of that life and era, possibly hinting that such matters still exist in society now.

The two third-year heroines, Hazel Wong and the Honourable Daisy Wells, have formed a secret Detective Agency. Although Daisy, with her blonde hair, wide blue eyes and energy on the lacrosse field, appears a tall and typical English Rose, she artfully conceals a Sherlockian intelligence and ruthlessness. 

 
By way of contrast, short, thoughtful Hazel Wong, with her long brown hair and dark eyes, has come all the way from Hong Kong. Sent by her wealthy father so she will have a "good English education", Hazel discovers that she must learn about the often uncomfortable “English way” of doing things, along with coping with the cold weather.  Hazel becomes Daisy's carefully observant Watson, recording their investigations in her Casebook, and we follow the twists and turns of the plot - and the oddities of school life - through her eyes and experiences. 

Daisy is admirably impulsive but shy, reliable Hazel is the one with whom the reader identifies and sympathizes. The plot starts promptly: Hazel returns alone to the “haunted” gym for her pullover but finds the body of Miss Bell lying below the balcony.  However, when Hazel and Daisy return, the science-mistress's corpse has gone. Although the headmistress reports that Miss Bell has been called away, the girls know better and set out to prove it. The short chapters whip along from one excitement to another and, for those who occasionally need to check up on who is who, or where, a helpful plan of the school grounds and list of characters is included at the front of the volume.

In true thirties-detective style, Hazel and Daisy draw up a list of suspect staff, examine their motives and whereabouts, employ clever stratagems (and lies) and pursue the case to the most surprising end. I found this book a very satisfying read, with a healthy display of bold spirits and curiosity!

MURDER MOST UNLADYLIKE is the first in a series of four crime novels (followed by ARSENIC FOR TEA, FIRST CLASS MURDER and JOLLY FOUL PLAY) and although the plots do have something slightly predictable in the solution, they all offer enjoyable escapism for 10- 13 year old readers, despite scary moments and neatly murderous contents.

(A very small worry: I am not sure that, without the enthusiasm of my bookshop friend, I’d have come away with the book. The cover art does fit the period and genre extremely well but I am not sure the covers sell the series well enough on their own. I really am hoping I am wrong here!)

Robin Stevens is also the author of one of the twelve stories in the highly-praised MYSTERY & MAYHEM anthology. She also reports on her blog that she is currently working on Book Five of the MURDER MOST UNLADYLIKE series. Jolly good show there, Stevens!

Review by Penny Dolan.

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DON'T JUDGE ME by Linda Strachan, Reviewed by Penny Dolan.

This novel's stunning cover blazes with flames, reminding us that arson is, in writing terms, already an interesting focus for a book for older teens and young adult readers. 

However, in “Don’t Judge Me” award-winning author Linda Strachan has also created a very clever novel. We are offered four – or maybe five – protagonists, each of whom could have set the fire, but the plot takes one twist after another, making the reader suspend judgement.

The book is written in a simple style and the different viewpoints are clearly indicated so the novel feels accessible for most teen readers.   

Chapter by interwoven chapter, a loose gang of four teenage friends reveal more about themselves, their backgrounds and their conflicts..

The novel begins strongly, with stroppy, half-drunk Suzie, a rebel in foster care, catching a baby tumbling from one of the burning flats on the estate. Another fire blazes in the home of Jenna and her loving Indian family.  Unlike Suzie, Jenna gets almost everything she wants - except the freedom to be an individual. Now, forced to move into her aunty’s home, Jenna will be even more closely watched. And was the fire a racist attack?  Jenna and her family face troubling threats.

The pair of boys are Malky and Jack. Troubled Malky is someone Suzie has known since they were in care together, but now he brings his own problems and solutions to the mix. Jack, Malky’s friend, seems to be the most stable of the group – but is he? Jack lives with his frail grandmother. His journalist mother is more interested in her assignments abroad than in her own son and he is full of hidden anger and bitterness.

A local police officer, DI Larkin,  has the task of trying to untangle the case and the conflicting clues - as well as working out what the anonymous witness saw on that night when the fire took hold – and how her terrified account fits in with the statements on his desk.

At first, the four teenage friends seem to have little in common beyond their love of hanging about together. They are full of the usual teenage jealousies, insecurities and bravado. They get annoyed by each other and indulge in tantrums and games, especially games that can go wrong. Nevertheless,during the novel, the experiences they share force them to decide on where their loyalties lie and the importance of truth. 

Meanwhile, the reader is forced to wait and suspend judgement until they have heard each part of the story in full.

As author Keith Gray says, “Don’t Judge Me” is “a tricksy whodunit” and a great contemporary read for teenagers.

Penny Dolan.

Don't Judge Me was published in 2012 by Strident Publishing.

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The Devil's Staircase by Helen Fitzgerald: reviewed by Gillian Philip

Please note: this review is of an adult novel (officially speaking, but see below).

I came on this book, and this author, not by accident so much as by duty. Scheduled for a panel discussion at the first ever Bloody Scotland crime writing festival - this September in Stirling - I had that sudden, ghastly realisation: that while I already knew and liked @FitzHelen from Twitter, I had somehow failed to read any of her novels. I already knew and loved the work of my other fellow panellist, Cathy MacPhail, but Helen's books, if not Helen herself, were new to me.

Our event was titled Once Upon A Crime and was aimed at discussing Young Adult crime fiction in a festival mostly devoted to the adult variety. Helen's own YA novels, Amelia O'Donohue Is So Not A Virgin and the forthcoming Deviant, are so far only available in the States, so to get to know her writing I chose one of her adult books: The Devil's Staircase.

I wish every duty felt so little like a... duty. Character and voice being my absolute favourite thing/two things in a book, I was delighted (and not a little envious) to be grabbed by the throat on para one page one.

The person doing the grabbing was Bronny, a naive young Australian who runs away to London and the freedom of life in a squat. She has her reasons, and they're not your average needing-to-find-oneself, coming-of-age motives. Indeed, the last thing Bronny wants to find is her self, and the truth of it. Try not being seized and shaken by a girl whose first words to you are these:

"It was fifty-fifty. Mum had it, and died in a pool of her own mad froth."

Oh, Bronny has her demons to escape - in the form of that fifty-fifty chance of a hideous life-threatening disease - and you want her to elude them every bit as much as she does herself. But of course this is a crime novel, with mystery and murder at its heart, and those do not take a back seat. One of the things I liked best about The Devil's Staircase was that although it never lost sight of Bronny's mental torment, it did not gnaw endlessly at it. Bronny is justifiably distracted by her fears, and they contribute to the heartstring-snapping tension of the central plot, but there's something even more sinister under the floorboards - and in the best traditions of the gutsy heroine, Bronny is the one who's going to have to discover it.

We talked a lot at Bloody Scotland about how YA crime fiction differs from the adult version. A young protagonist, the three of us agreed (under the penetrating quizzing of our wonderful chair, Dr Cristina Johnston). We differed a little on whether we'd tone down bad language, violence or sex, but none of us would patronise our readers by 'writing down'. No didactic moral lessons, we also agreed, but maybe a moral heart: a sense that deaths have to matter; that victims be real and mourned and valued as more than plot devices or splatter-fodder (the way it is in the best adult crime fiction, I hastily add; but I for one have read adult fiction where that just ain't so).

But maybe the most important thing, we all reckoned, was a sense of hope at the end. Not a happy ending, necessarily - sometimes anything but - but there has to be at least a way out of violence and misery, a shot at redemption.

The Devil's Staircase qualifies on all counts, as far as I can see, and though it is definitely an adult novel, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to a mature older teenager, albeit one with a strong stomach. Bronny's certainly young enough to be a Young Adult heroine, though the horrors that face her are very much of the grown-up world. The victim who takes centre stage in the novel is as important and vivid a character as Bronny herself, and I bit off my favourite nail worrying about her family and her fate (indeed I took to Twitter at one frenetic point to berate her author). As for the ending...

Well, no spoilers. But if you like a psycho-thriller that keeps you reading till the small hours simply because you care desperately what happens - this is one for you.

The Devil's Staircase by Helen Fitzgerald; Polygon 2010

www.gillianphilip.com
www.facebook.com/gillianphilipauthor

Bloody Scotland: Stirling 13th-15th September 2013









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