reviews 10 – 14 Middle/Secondary continued The Demon Undertaker HHH


Cameron McAllister, Corgi, 630pp, 978-0-5525-7404-4, £6.99 pbk


After an accident that killed his father Thomas Fielding is sent to London to become an apprentice to his Uncle Henry Fielding a playwright and Chief Magistrate of London. Thomas has an iron hand made by his father after his own hand was crushed at his father’s forge when he was a young boy. This hand proves to be not only a talking point but very useful in solving crimes. Thomas arrives in an eighteenth-


century London full of filth, poverty and lawlessness. Almost immediately he finds himself witnessing a kidnap by the supposed Demon Undertaker who has been snatching victims across


Thomas comes to court his uncle proves he really is his nephew and he is released.


the


businessman, Lord Davenport and Henry Fielding is put on the case. The mystery becomes more complex involving Grace’s governess and her illegitimate son, graverobbers and a dissection school as Thomas and a motley crew of his acquaintances, and secretly his cousin Esther, chase across London following clues to help Henry solve the crime. In the end the plot is neatly tied


up and Henry announces that he will take on his nephew and daughter (after a bit of persuasion) as well as Percy and Malarkey as his assistants to solve future mysteries. This is the beginning of the Bow Street Runners. Told in the first person the plot


The kidnapped daughter


of a wealthy local girl, Grace is himself. Luckily when


gives chase but is arrested as he is found near the abandoned hearse and accused of being the Demon Undertaker


London in a hearse. He


humankind in the long distant past and banished to a parallel Grey Land. Not at all like those fairies photographed at the bottom of Edwardian gardens, they are re-asserting their claim to their former homeland in a brutally effective manner by slaughtering the young Irish one by one. At some time in their adolescence, each person will be ‘called’ into the Grey Land to be hunted, tortured and killed, leaving behind only a pile of their clothes. They will return alive only if they can survive the hunt for more than a day in the Grey Land, which is three minutes in the human world. Very few do and even the dead are often returned hideously mutilated just to appal and terrify the living. The novel is structured around the friendships and rivalries in the school’s Year 5, focused on two young people whose survival is the most precarious: Nessa, whose legs have been twisted by polio; and Anto who is a pacifist by conviction. At intervals, school life is interrupted as a student is ‘called’ and we see how each hunt plays out.


There’s


characters’ school relationships, which, given the teenagers’ likely fate, are, for good or ill, that much more intense. The Grey Land, its beautiful


misshapen creatures who do their bidding are all vividly realised. Each hunt runs its own dreadful course. And a sardonic, hard-edged narrative voice


moves along at a cracking pace with no let-up. There is plenty of detail and description of a filthy stinking London – repeated almost too much at times. The mix of real and imagined historical characters give the story an authenticity and a vivid picture of the period although it occasionally descends into over-the-top hammer- horror type gruesomeness. There is comedy too where Percy’s trousers always fall down and social issues such as poverty, race relations, slavery, and roles for women are lightly woven into the story. A fun read for those who enjoy a gruesome mystery. JC


The Call HHHH


Peadar O’ Guilin, David Fickling, 336pp, 978 1 910200 97 1, £10.99 hbk


The basic plot of this novel is certainly familiar. There’s a boarding school which is training its teenage students for combat anticipating a time when they will find themselves naked and alone hunted through an unfamiliar landscape. But if the Hunger Games template is obvious, Peadar O’Guilin offers a compelling Celtic variation. The book is set in a future dystopian Ireland. The fairy folk, the Sidhe, were dispossessed of the island by


young people living in the shadow of death. However, the frantic climax comes on rather suddenly and this reader, at least, would like to have discovered more about the Sidhe than just their ingenious cruelty. That might be remedied in the future, for the battle that closes the book leaves the war between human and Sidhe unresolved. There could well be more to come. CB


Clover Moon HHHHH


Jacqueline Wilson, Doubleday, 400pp, 978-0-8575-3273-2, £12.99 hbk


Clover Moon is a girl of eleven, the oldest


siblings, living in poverty in Victorian London.


when she was little, she lives with her father and her abusive stepmother Mildred, who has brought her own five children to the family home. The burden of looking after the younger children falls largely on Clover. Clover


Godfrey Arthur Fisher, is a maker of dolls and is commonly known as Mr Dolly. Having scoliosis, he is referred to in this period as a hunchback and is often mocked for his impairment. Clover’s


Wheels, who is referred second


cripple’. He would use a wheelchair if his family could afford one. In lieu of that he uses a kind of skateboard fashioned for him by Mr Dolly. Clover claims he is ‘as sharp as a tack’. Clover


looks after a baby who is


friend is Jimmy to as ‘a


has two friends. One,


of seven siblings and half- Her mother


having died adds to the impression of sadistic rulers and the


The situation is well developed. plenty


of interest in the


discovered to be suffering from scarlet fever. Mildred is so apprehensive that Clover might catch the disease and infect the other


locks her away in a cupboard. As it transpires, Clover does not catch the disease but her only full sister Megs does catch it and dies. Clover decides she has no future with Mildred and her father, so she runs away. The narrative


questions what kind of life Clover can fashion for herself and what her future will hold. It goes almost without saying that the narrative unfolds with expert skill in the hands of this masterly story-teller. Mildred’s abuse of Clover is not revealed in a sudden blinding moment. It is revealed step by painful step, rendered all the more convincing for that. As a fictional character Clover is well


able to seize and inspire the attention and respect of a modern readership. If any young reader thinks that the predicament


girl in Victorian London is too remote from her own interests to command attention, she should think again. There are three characters in Wilson’s book who have disabilities, Mr Dolly, Jimmy Wheels and a later character Mary Anne, who has epilepsy. It would have been easy to depict these characters as victims imprisoned by the social prejudices of their times. Instead they are strong, independent and influential characters in their own right. RB


Spy Master: Traitor’s Game HHH


Jan Burchett & Sara Vogler, Orion, 198pp, 978-1-4440-1070-1, £6.99, pbk


This is the second story in the Spy Master series, and continues the story of Jack who works as a scribe at the court of Henry VIII, though he has also been recruited as a spy for Thomas Cromwell. Jack is an enterprising lad and when asked by Cromwell to find out who has been stealing from members of the court, finds a secret passage which leads him to unmask the culprit as the King! But letting the King know without telling Cromwell is a bit of a problem so Jack makes up a riddle which amuses the King, enabling Jack to win a prize of money.


that there is something much deeper going on and Cromwell entrusts him with solving this as well. This is a considerable level up in the spying game, and Jack finds Miles the King’s Music master


uttering the word Babbage at the last. Jack, helped by Cat, the seamstress, follows the trail, unravels the code to find the message sent to Cromwell from Spain, and nearly gets another spy killed. All ends well however, ready for the next story. This is a well written and pacey


historical romp, imparting enough detail to make it different from a modern


an attractive character, aided and abetted by Cat who always has the right tool to help out! The cover is a little more scary than the story within, and it is intriguing that this story is written by two people – it does feel


quite seamless however! JF adventure story. Jack is tortured and dying, Jack is aware of a poverty-stricken now poses the children that she Stealing Snow HHH


Danielle Paige, Bloomsbury, 372pp, 978-1-4088-7293-2, £7.99 pbk


Snow is locked in a psychiatric hospital, her anger controlled by means of a cocktail of drugs. She sees her mother infrequently and her father refuses to visit. The one glimmer of hope in her life is her love for a fellow inmate, Bale, an arsonist whose destructive tendencies, like Snow’s, are suppressed by medication. However, Snow – like almost all


of the characters in this book – is not what she seems and a terrifying journey through a mirror brings her to the mysterious world of Algid, where, to her astonishment and incredulity, she is a Princess, daughter of an evil and corrupt


continue thick and fast and Snow discovers that her destiny is to save this world – her world – from the clutches of this indomitable power. The narrative is ripe for plucking by


possessed of mysterious and magical powers. Action is whirlwind-fast, non-stop and frantic, moving from one elaborate stage set


fantasises and characters King. The revelations


TV companies, redolent of intricately plotted


with the aid of magic and trickery. Loyalties seem to shift bewilderingly, as characters are rarely who or what they first appear to be. The story has a deep seam of romance woven through it as a clutch of charismatic males become entangled with Snow: indeed, the reason she travelled to the world of Algid was that she was trying to find Bale and bring him back to what appeared to be the real world of the psychiatric unit-even though this, too, is not as it seems. Stealing Snow gives


readers a highly-coloured opportunity to immerse themselves in a fashionable


but they will need to keep their wits about them to keep pace with the convolutions of plot and character. The book’s blurb promises an ‘epic new series’ which will ensure that readers are hooked in for some considerable time to come. VR


Time after Time HHHH


Judi Curtin, O’Brien Press, 288pp, 978-1910646151, £7.99 pbk


Judi Curtin writes sensitive, hugely engaging novels about contemporary girls and the things that matter most to them: friends, family relationships, learning to be happy with who you are. Most of her books have modern settings, though


couple of time-slip novels sending characters back into the past.


this story, her characters again travel back through time but to a decade many Books for Keeps readers will remember well: the 1980s. Molly and Beth have been best


friends for ages, though when Molly’s Mum and Beth’s dad announce they’re moving in together, their relationship is bound to change.


together to attend a concert without their parents’ knowledge, they stumble into a strange sweet shop they’ve never noticed before, and emerge again into 1984. As readers


Books for Keeps No.221 November 2016 29 Sneaking out


she’s written a In


and intriguing genre, young to another


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