Running Girl

Gr 9 Up—This sly British murder mystery weaves in elements of both hard-boiled detective tales (think Raymond Chandler) and buddy-cop mismatch (think 48 Hours). Garvie Smith is a whip-smart and drolly cool high school slacker who spends his free time mulling over mathematical riddles and solving imaginary crimes. When the town's difficult It Girl, Chloe Dow, is found murdered, Garvie applies his skills to solving a real-life homicide. As the teen's long-suffering Bajan mother hits the limit of her patience, Garvie forges a strained partnership with the detective on the case, an observant Sikh named Raminder Singh. Detective Singh has pressures of his own—this might be his last case if he can't solve this complex crime. The story leads Garvie into squatter shacks, dark underpasses, sleek casinos, and a fair bit of danger. The main strength of this well-written and smoothly paced novel is its diverse and believable male characters. Garvie is exceptionally well drawn—he is fully realized as the town's genius charmer—and Singh is similarly fleshed out as a crisp perfectionist wearing at the seams. One misstep is the female characters, who, perhaps because of the genre's tropes, rarely emerge beyond their pat characterizations as vixens, icy beauties, and pathetic housewives.