Currently reading: SMILING JACK by Ken Catran (young adult mystery)

Taking a brief hiatus from the adult crime and thriller fiction, in the past day or so I've dipped into a young adult mystery written by one of New Zealand's most prolific and beloved children's authors, Ken Catran.

SMILING JACK was published late last year. Here's the blurb: "There's something wrong with this picture. Robert lives in a small, prosperous rural town where his father is a respected and trusted pillar of the local community and financial advisor to the eccentric but essentially harmless community of Atenists who live nearby.

When Robert's father and uncle are killed in road accident his comfortable world rapidly begins to unravel. With so much to deal with, he barely thinks about the evil grin on the playing card Jack found at the site of the accident. Until the second death, and the third, when once again Jack's leering malicious grin is found nearby.

As Robert realises he never knew his father, those people his father betrayed turn against him, and he is forced to look deep into the shadows that are closing in if he is to get out alive. A classic whodunnit with a startling and unexpected twist, Ken Catran's dark and brooding murder mystery is a real page-turner that will have you looking over your shoulder like Robert, desperately trying to second guess Smiling Jack."

I'm about 2/3 of the way through, and enjoying the read, although it is of course a bit more 'basic' than most of the crime fiction I'm used to reading. Catran has created an intriguing story, and I'm still wondering what exactly is going on in the town of Tucker. He also evokes a nice sense of 'small town-ness', where the locals all know each other, and each other's business. Which isn't always a good thing. He sprinkles some mythological, historical, and literary references throughout too (eg Kipling's poetry, Beowulf, etc), which is kind of fun.

Catran has won nine writing awards and written close to fifty books, and was also the 2007 recipient of the Margaret Mahy Award for services to children's literature. Here's part of his bio from the New Zealand Book Council website:

"An award-winning children’s writer and scriptwriter who has written for some of New Zealands best-loved television series. He has won many awards for his television scripts and in 1986 was a finalist for Best Overseas Programme at the US Emmy Awards. His books for children and young adults engage with the historical, the fantastical, and science fiction. He has been shortlisted many times in the New Zealand Post Book Awards and won Book of the Year in 2001. In 2004 he won the Esther Glen Award for a distinguished contribution to literature at the LIANZA Childrens Book Awards."

You can read more about Ken Catran on Wikipedia here, at the New Zealand Book Council website here, at NZ On Screen (for his TV credits etc) here, and in an interview with kid readers at the Christchurch City Library here.

Lis for LETHAL DELIVERIES by Ken Benn

For my second go around at the Crime Fiction Alphabet (read my 2010 posts here), I've set myself the challenging task of focusing not only just on New Zealand-themed posts, but just on Kiwi crime fiction books (ie I won't do any author profiles etc this time around) - although sometimes it may be the author's name that is relevant to the letter of the week.

This week I'm featuring LETHAL DELIVERIES, a young adult murder mystery by Palmerston North-based physics teacher Ken Benn that was published by Penguin early last year (I believe it may have been released earlier by a smaller publisher, achieved bestseller status, and then was picked up by Penguin as the first in a trilogy). I understand the books TRAPPED OUTSIDE THE CAGE and GUTTED also on the way in future.

In LETHAL DELIVERIES, "Rochelle has her hopes set on one day playing in the National Women's Inline Hockey team. Her goal seems to slip from her reach as she gets sucked into her brother, Jack's world of gangs and drug dealing. But is the gang life what Rochelle's brother really wants or is it a choice his father has made for him? Rochelle finds herself in a dangerous world supported by the most unlikely companions and soon learns there's a price to be paid for these friendships – an ultimate price." I understand Benn's next book should be out at some stage this year. Teenage readers who've commented online about LETHAL DELIVERIES have said things like:

• "Exciting, well written and full of dialogue. It has highly realistic characters ... Best of all, it has that rare thing in a book that makes you not want to put it down... the writer has taken the time to get into the minds of the characters while writing it... It doesn’t try to be like those goody-goody books where no one gets hurt or killed in case the readers get sad; it is realistic. In my opinion it is just as desirable to read as the Harry Potter books, just not as famous."


• "What I loved about this book is it’s not what everyone wants to hear. It opens our eyes to what is really happening in our communities. It has suspense, excitement, twists, turns and characters that, in many ways, were very real to me. The book made me feel many emotions—happy, sad, angry, scared."


• "I think that it’s a very good book because it relates to the problems that some of us have today for both teenagers and adults. I thought the book was great because it shows what homeless people have to go through ... and how some of them are not as bad as people think they are."

So that's some pretty great praise from the target audience. Penguin also created high school study notes and reader questions for LETHAL DELIVERIES, getting students to think and talk about narrative, and themes such as family relationships and loyalty.

In a newspaper interview last year it was reported that schoolteacher Benn had spent five years researching tbe book, including time talking to both the victims of and perpetrators of youth crime, visiting the Palmerston North youth justice facility and talking to social workers. Also, in Wellington, he slept under a bridge with a group of streetkids "who had decided to opt out of society," to try to understand what their life was like.

Did you like reading crime fiction as a teenager? Do you think it's good for adolescent and teenage readers to read books with 'serious' content like murder, homelessness, drugs, etc? Have you read LETHAL DELIVERIES? Comments welcome.

More 2010 Kiwi crime fiction: SMILING JACK by Ken Catran

Earlier this year I introduced Crime Watch readers to a debutant Kiwi author who wrote crime/thriller fiction for young adults; Palmerston North Boys' High physics teacher Ken Benn, whose debut LETHAL DELIVERIES is intended to be the first in a trilogy.

Soon afterwards I discovered that well-known New Zealand writer Ken Catran had also written some young adult books with a crime fiction bent - I managed to get my hands on BLUE MURDER and a couple of his other young adult crime novels (which are sitting, waiting to be read, on my ever-burgeoning Kiwi crime fiction bookshelves at home).

Here's part of Catran's bio from the New Zealand Book Council website: "An award-winning children’s writer and scriptwriter who has written for some of New Zealands best-loved television series. He has won many awards for his television scripts and in 1986 was a finalist for Best Overseas Programme at the US Emmy Awards. His books for children and young adults engage with the historical, the fantastical, and science fiction. He has been shortlisted many times in the New Zealand Post Book Awards and won Book of the Year in 2001. In 2004 he won the Esther Glen Award for a distinguished contribution to literature at the LIANZA Childrens Book Awards."

Catran, who has won nine writing awards and written close to fifty books, was also the 2007 recipient of the Margaret Mahy Award for services to children's literature. And this year he has released another mystery novel for young adults, SMILING JACK.

Here's his new book's blurb: "There's something wrong with this picture. Robert lives in a small, prosperous rural town where his father is a respected and trusted pillar of the local community and financial advisor to the eccentric but essentially harmless community of Atenists who live nearby. When Robert's father and uncle are killed in road accident his comfortable world rapidly begins to unravel. With so much to deal with, he barely thinks about the evil grin on the playing card Jack found at the site of the accident. Until the second death, and the third, when once again Jack's leering malicious grin is found nearby. As Robert realises he never knew his father, those people his father betrayed turn against him, and he is forced to look deep into the shadows that are closing in if he is to get out alive. A classic whodunnit with a startling and unexpected twist, Ken Catran's dark and brooding murder mystery is a real page-turner that will have you looking over your shoulder like Robert, desperately trying to second guess Smiling Jack."

I'm going to try and get my hands on a copy of SMILING JACK soon too. Good to see more and more New Zealand crime fiction (adult and young adult) being published.

You can read more about Ken Catran on Wikipedia here, at the New Zealand Book Council website here, at NZ On Screen (for his TV credits etc) here, and in an interview with kid readers at the Christchurch City Library here.