The Morgue and Me

Author: John C. Ford

Publisher: Viking

Publication Year: 2009

Most of the readers will be: High school boys.

Reader's Advisory: For another 2009 mystery, try The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.

Summary: Christopher Newell thinks that working at the morgue over the summer will help prepare him for his future career as a spy. He is more right than he could have predicted. One day he sees the medical examiner and the sheriff talking over a dead body. He finds $15,000 in a brief case in the medical examiner's office. Christopher learns from the newspaper the next day that the dead guy is named Mitch Blaylock and his death was ruled a suicide. But when Christopher sneaks a peak at the body himself, he sees that Mitch took several bullets to the chest. In his search to uncover who murdered Mitch Blaylock, and why the murder is being covered up, he teams up with Tina, an attractive journalist. Can Christopher and Tina unravel the mystery without ending up like Mitch?

My favorite passage:

Someone was knocking on my window. Loudly.
It was the insanely hot woman from the Courier, which made me wonder if maybe I was still fantasizing. Or maybe, better, she was stalking me. I rolled down the window to find out.
"You again," she said. "You're popping up all over."
"Yeah, me again. Hi."
"So listen..." She stopped to fish for something in her bag and came up with the memo I had left for Art Bradford, Senior Reporter. Apparently, she had decided to intercept it. Hmm. Her eyes found what she needed and looked back at me. "...Chris. We need to talk."
I almost said something. I make everyone call me Christopher. It fits the savvy NSA operative I hope to be someday. "Chris" feels neutered, like the professors who ride bikes around campus with straps around their pant legs. But something about the woman turned me to jelly, and I made my first-ever exception to the name rule.
"Umm, okay. About what?"
"What do you think? C'mon, we're going to lunch." She walked over to her car, not bothering to check if I was following her. On the way, she pulled out a cell phone and tossed the gum she'd been smacking into some bushes.
The car was a black Trans Am. It had a T-top roof and a gold falcon painted on the hood.
It fit her perfectly. (pg 51-52)

What I really think:
The mystery kept me reading, but there were many other charming elements to this novel. I like that Christopher seems very grown up while he is doing some of his investigating, but he is still a kid when it comes to relationships. The fact that he is spending so much time with an older woman seems weird, but the way they interact with each other is realistic. He has a crush on Tina, but realizes she isn't interested in him. And although he constantly talks about how hot Tina is, he clearly has stronger feelings for his high school crush - a girl he has been too shy to ask out. The book is both fun and well written.

The Knife of Never Letting Go

Author: Patrick Ness

Publisher: Walker Books

Publication Year: 2008

Most of the readers will be: Late middle school and early high school boys and girls.

Reader's advisory: Try Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles for short stories that take place on a recently colonized Mars.

Summary:
Todd Hewitt has grown up in Prentisstown, the only surviving colony on New World. During a war with the local aliens, called Spackle, the aliens infected the animals with a germ that made them all start talking, and infected the humans with a germ that made all their thoughts heard. The Noise germ drove people crazy. It killed half the men and all the women.
In Prentisstown, a boy becomes a man at thirteen. Todd is the last boy in Prentisstown and he is one month away from his thirteenth birthday. His parents both died from the Noise germ and he lives with friends of theirs, Ben and Cillian.
When he and his dog Manchee go into the swamp one morning to gather apples Todd comes across something he has never experienced before. Quiet. There is a quiet spot in the swamp and it isn't natural. Todd tries to keep the quiet out of his Noise as he walks back through town, but somehow it escapes.
Now Todd is running. Because he and that quiet both mean something to Prentisstown, and the men don't want either of them to get away.

My favorite passage:

The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say.
About anything.
"Need a poo, Todd."
"Shut up, Manchee."
"Poo. Poo, Todd."
"I said shut it."
We're walking across the wild fields south-east of town, those ones that slope down to the river and head on towards the swamp. Ben's sent me to pick him some swamp apples and he's made me take Manchee with me, even tho we all know Cillian only bought him to stay on Mayor Prentiss's good side and so suddenly here's this brand new dog as a present for my birthday last year when I never said I wanted any dog, that what I said I wanted was for Cillian to finally fix the fissionbike so I wouldn't have to walk every forsaken place in this stupid town, but oh, no, happy birthday, Todd, here's a brand new puppy, Todd, and even tho you don't want him, even tho you never asked for him, guess who has to feed him and train him and wash him and take him for walks and listen to him jabber now that he's got old enough for the talking germ to set his mouth moving? Guess who?
"Poo," Manchee barks quietly to himself. "Poo, poo, poo."
"Just have yer stupid poo and quit yapping about it." (pg 3-4)

What I really think:
I'm kind of obsessed with this book. I'm kind of upset that the next Chaos Walking book isn't coming out until May. I don't want to say too much about it and I couldn't really share a passage except from the very beginning because it's full of questions and finding out the answers is part of the fun. I wish I could say you have all the answers by the end. But you don't. I suppose that's why book two is called The Ask and the Answer.
What can I tell you? This novel experiments with how different people, and different groups of people, handle situations they never imagined they would be in. How Right and Wrong get all mixed up and you can still do what's Right when everyone else is doing Wrong, but it is easy to see how so many people get involved in doing Wrong.
At one point, a character says that Noise is just information and too much information is a bad thing. I would never call this novel an allegory for our "information age," but it is not unlikely that Ness is making a passing comment on our current overabundance of information. Just remember that the cure for too much information is a good librarian to help you sort through it. ;)