The Biker's Brother

Gr 9 Up—Seventeen-year-old Josh Williams's football career is on the line the summer after a knee injury. While he should be taking the summer building his strength at the gym, he is instead pulled into the high-risk world of Canadian motorcycle clubs when his brother, Jamie, a member of the Annihilators, is jailed on suspicion of murder. And not just any murder, but the murder of Trent, the meth-cooking brother of the love of Josh's life, Brenda. Josh and his mother don't have the funds to spring for a proper defense; dangerous situations and deadly cover-ups infiltrate Josh's efforts to secure a lawyer and prove Jamie's innocence. While a potentially exciting murder mystery in a not-often-explored facet of rural Canadian lifestyle, this novel falls flat. Josh and his contemporaries do not read like teens, or even as friends and love interests, but as one-dimensional plot pawns with very little development or even purpose, including within their relationships with each other. Adult characters often provide necessary plot advancement when convenient, as well as explanations of rural Canadian life (such as mentioning the racist connotation of the Confederate flag), but still don't provide much compelling purpose beyond the mystery. Flat narration leads to what ultimately ends up to be an anticlimactic and almost too-tidy conclusion of an overall shallow look into Canadian biker clubs.