Trial by Fire: A Riley Donovan Mystery

by Norah McClintock

Orca Book Publishers

978-1-4598-0936-9

231 pp.

Ages 12+

April 2016

Everybody’s hiding something, big or little.  Everybody tells lies, even if they’re little white ones.  Everybody is a potential suspect until they’re eliminated from the list.  Every smile might be hiding black thoughts and even black actions. (pg. 154)

Teen Riley Donovan has already had a complicated life.  Her mother died when Riley was a baby and her father, who travels extensively as a medical docor with an international charity, left her in the care of her sixties rocker grandfather Jimmy Donovan with whom she toured for years.  Upon his death, Riley has moved in with her mother’s sister Ginny, a police detective, with whom she has just relocated to a small town.

Their moving boxes haven’t even been broken down before Riley discovers the barn of their neighbour, Mr. Goran, on fire and the man trapped within.  In critical condition, Mr. Goran is unable to say what happened, though small-town gossip suggests he set the fire himself for the insurance money.  Riley cannot believe that the kind gentleman from Kurdistan who welcomed them so warmly and spoke so lovingly of his farm would be capable of such fraud or destruction.  Though warned by her Aunt Ginny against poking her nose into police business, Riley discovers a small-town community steeped in bitterness and discrimination against Mr. Goran and knows that their neighbour was the victim, not the instigator.  And Riley sets out to prove it.

Though Norah McClintock's better-known mystery series for young people include her Robyn Hunter Mysteries, Chloe and Levesque Mysteries and Mike and Riel series, Riley Donovan is hardly a newcomer to Norah McClintock's repertoire of crime fiction.  This series which includes at least six titles previously published in Australia is now being published in Canada by Orca Book Publishers and Trial by Fire is essentially our introduction to this young sleuth and fortunately there is a follow-up title, From Above, due out in October. (Earlier English titles published by International Masters Publishers include Breaking In, Picking Up the Scent, Framed, The Secret of Golden Acres, Schooled and Web of Lies.)

While not as gritty as some of Norah McClintock’s other mysteries, Trial by Fire is as packed with the plot twists and turns of any of her award-winning crime fiction.  Moreover, setting it in a small-town, rife with familial connections and intolerant attitudes, adds further tension to this first-rate mystery.  As for Riley, she’s a character whose life adventures I hope we’ll continue to share.  Her past has shaped her into a conscientious and compassionate young woman who sees beyond the surface and endeavours to make things right.  What better grounds to establish a teen solver of mysteries?

250 Hours

Written by Colleen Nelson

Coteau Books

978-1-55-5—641-9

152 pp.

Ages 12+

September 2015

“I don’t want to set them. But it’s like if I don’t do it, something worse will happen.  Watching something burn means I’ve saved a different bad thing from happening.”  He knew it sounded crazy, but maybe she’d understand because there was hurt inside of her too. (pg. 68)

And Jess Sinclair is right.  The hurt that compels him to set fires, hence his 250 hours community service, is also in 18-year-old Sara Jean whose grandmother’s garage is being cleaned out by Jess.  But, while both deal with abandonment issues–Jess by his father eight years earlier and Sara Jean at two months of age by her mother–and have significant relationships with their grandmothers, Jess’s hurt is wrapped up in living with the double-edged discrimination of being Métis as Sara Jean deals with being shackled to small-town life as primary caregiver to her 450-lb. grandmother, Gam.

While the two teens attempt to accept their responsibilities to their families and communities, they yearn to become independent of the hurts that define their lives, and they find themselves drawn to each other, particularly after Sara Jean discovers memorabilia of her Grandpa’s teaching at the local residential school.   But everyone seems to be keeping secrets and the discrimination Sara Jean detects from her boyfriend and his family, her own Gam and Aunt Mim towards Jess and Aboriginal People compels her to learn more, especially after she finds a small pair of moccasins that, unbeknownst to her, Jess is convinced his kokum had made.

Colleen Nelson tells another powerful story (see my review of The Fall, Great Plains Teen Fiction, 2013) in 250 Hours, but focuses on small-town mindedness, the injustice of the residential schools, and family expectations in such a way that the reader will sympathize for Jess and Sara Jean who feel trapped by the stifling suffocation of their histories.  How do you break free to make a new life for yourself when there is so much holding you back?

There’s always a reason to stay.  I guess there has to be better reasons to go. (pg. 69)

Don’t be surprised if you feel enraged by the injustices perpetrated against these young people and against Aboriginal people.  That’s good because we all should be.  I suspect that 250 Hours is a truer reflection of life for many who experience blatant discrimination, whether wholesale as evoked by the residential school situations or  randomly by ignorant individuals, and for youth limited by the influence of family and peers.  Not surprising that everyone seems to know what's best for others. Thankfully, Colleen Nelson makes sure that Sara Jean's and Jess's stories are told, albeit in a fictionalized tale, to give them voice, freedom and limitless possibilities to be themselves.  It’s a powerful story of redemption where none seemed possible.

Book Launch: 250 Hours (Winnipeg)

Author of

Tori by Design

Great Plains Books, 2011

and

The Fall

Great Plains Teen Fiction, 2013

Reviewed here

Colleen Nelson

and

Coteau Books

launch her newest book

250 Hours

250 Hours

by Colleen Nelson

Coteau Books

978-1-55050-641-9

200 pp.

Ages 12+

For release September 2015

on 

September 19, 2015

at
7 p.m.

at McNally Robinson Books
Grant Park in the Atrium
Winnipeg, MB

Here's the blurb from the McNally Robinson website:

Jess and Sara Jean couldn’t be more different. He’s a loner with a criminal record; a Metis raised on the Reserve; the son of a residential school survivor. She’s from nearby Edelburg, a conservative small town. Abandoned by her mother, Sara Jean cares for her obese grandmother and writes to escape.

When Jess is found guilty of arson, he’s ordered to complete 250 hours of community service, starting with Sara Jean’s neglected garage. Sorting through boxes left by her grandfather, they discover that the secrets keeping their communities apart are the very things that will bring them together.

Looking forward to reading this one!

Thrice Burned: A Portia Adams Adventure

Atlantic Canadian publisher Fierce Ink Press has generously included me in the blog tour Blog on Fire for the release of Angela Misri's sequel Portia Adams Adventure, Thrice Burned.  Please check out additional blog posts at Fierce Ink Press. And, for those of you who have forgotten the deals of Portia Adam's first cases, read my review of Jewel of the Thames and get some additional background from my interview with Angela Misri at the time of its release.

Thrice Burned 

A Portia Adams Adventure

Written by Angela Misri

Fierce Ink Press
978-1927746691
281 pp.
Ages 12+
For release March 24, 2015
Reviewed from advance reading copy ePub

The shocking revelation at the conclusion of Jewel of the Thames (Fierce Ink Press, 2014) that her grandparents on her father's side are ex-criminal Irene Adler–currently known as Irene Jones–and Sherlock Holmes may have hit Miss Portia Adams hard but she won't let it distract her from her law studies at Somerville College or from honing her detection skills.  She continues her lessons in self-defense from Bruiser Jenkins, and studying alongside Chief Inspector Archer of Scotland Yard.  But she's also learning more about London's landscape, both topographical and invisible, and about lie detection from the formidable lawyer Mr. Ian Meyers.  Having established her own group of Irregulars, street children whom she pays with money, food and treats, Portia undertakes three new cases, Casebooks Five through Seven : Thrice Burned, Box 850*, and Truth Be Told.

In Casebook Five, arsons at three different locations, but with no damage to adjoining buildings, have Portia making the acquaintance of Miss Anne Coleson, a reporter looking to salvage a marred reputation and earn a living to care for her younger siblings.  While Portia is reluctant to oblige, she begins to see some positives to Annie's proposal, especially once Annie becomes romantically involved with Constable Brian Dawes, a young man for whom Portia has romantic feelings.  Ultimately the two women work together somewhat to solve the perplexing arsons, though it is truly Portia with her sharp mind and doggedness who brings the criminals to justice.  And all that while she tries to balance her affections for Brian, the intriguing forensic scientist Dr. Whitaker, and her grandmother's choice of suitor, Dr. Beanstine, coroner and a lord's son.

While the title Thrice Burned does refer to the trio of arsons in which Portia becomes involved in solving, it can also refer to the multitude of circumstances by which her own reputation is injured, through antagonism, humiliation, disappointment and revelation.  Of course, the criminals whose crimes Portia reveals are always a potential threat to her, but the involvement of a reporter, Mr. Dick McGregor, whose fabricated and outlandish stories refer to her and her activities without any veracity, leads to endangering her work and privacy.  Though she has allowed Annie Coleson to refer to her activities as those of Consulting Detective P.C. Adams–without any reference to her gender or ancestry–McGregor puts Portia's actions into question with the police who begin to believe that Portia is taking credit for their work. Fortunately, the support of Brian Dawes, Chief Inspector Archer and Sergeant Michaels helps to right those incorrect insinuations.

In Casebook Six, Angela Misri effortlessly takes Portia into the darkness, that occasionally enveloped her grandfather Holmes, when flummoxed with a case of potential theft, an antagonistic British Secret Intelligence Service agent and her affections for Brian Dawes. 

"This is not an ordinary ennui, Portia.  The excitement and adrenaline of a case–a really engaging, difficult case–that was the high.  The solution and then the time between that and the next exciting case...that was the low.  And for Sherlock, the high was higher than anything else in his life, and, therefore, so was the low." (pg. 150)

Regardless of the complexity of the Box 850 case and the subsequent case involving the disappearance of women of ill-repute upon their public damnation at the Matfelon Church, Portia is able to focus her detection skills on solving the mysteries with scientific elegance.  Though struggling with amorous feelings with which she is wholly unfamiliar, Portia conducts her sleuthing with the eye for details and labyrinthine problem-solving of one grandfather i.e., Sherlock Holmes, and the humanity of the other, Dr. Watson. Angela Misri has created Portia Adams to be a true incarnation of the great detective and his friend and biographer, while ensuring the Canadian consulting detective is wholly her own person too.

Reading A Portia Adams Adventure, whether it be Jewel of the Thames or Thrice Burned, is like revisiting the writings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Just as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle often chose to recount several of Sherlock Holmes' cases in a single tome, Angela Misri follows suit, extending the authentic and complementary nature of the series to those of the famous detective.  Thrice Burned is like having new Sherlock Holmes mysteries to read, only now starring an inquisitive and astute young woman (without the Asperger's Syndrome tendencies) and in a London of the 1930s.  And it works so, so well.  Elementary, wouldn't you say?