When sixteen-year-old Penny Capelli moves to a small town near Hamilton she takes along her best friend, a huge rambunctious dog called Ollie. And what does her pet do? Drag Penny into a decades old murder mystery by digging up a human bone in the backyard of her aunt’s pub where the teen is staying.
So begins this page-turner written for adolescents, teens, adults who don’t find reading easy, as well as English as a Second Language students.
Short sentences in everyday language and snappy chapters keep the focus on the twists and turns of Crime Club and bring to life the adventurous Penny, her cousin Simon and newfound friends, as they set out to try and solve the mystery of the body buried in the pub garden.
This is an entertaining read and reminds this reviewer of similar stories devoured as an adolescent, one after the other as soon as I could get my hands on them. The characters with their enviable exciting lives seemed as real as the friend I sat next to in class.
That is author Melodie Campbell’s true skill, crafting entertaining stories written at a level where even if you find reading difficult or a chore the story will still draw you in. This prolific author has dozens of these quick reads to her credit, including the Rowena Trilogy series, The B Team series and the Goddaughter series about a mob family’s goddaughter who wishes she wasn’t!
Campbell, who lives in Oakville, Ontario has been a banker, marketing director and college instructor. She got her start writing stand-up comedy, with the ultimate result that she was billed “Queen of Comedy” in 2014 by the Toronto Sun. She has been a finalist and a winner of both the Derringer and Arthur Ellis awards for crime writing and her stories have been featured in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Star Magazine, Flash Fiction, Canadian Living, The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail.
Campbell’s publisher Orca Book Publishers of Victoria, British Columbia is an independently owned publisher of everything from board books for the very young to young adult readers. It is run from offices in a bright yellow house dating from the early 1900s just up the street from Chinatown. They provide books for all ages and ethnicities, plus indigenous Canadians and include five different high-interest, low-reading level (hi-lo) fiction for just about anyone facing literacy issues. These include Orca Currents, Orca Sports, Orca Limelights, Orca Soundings and Rapid Reads.
So, with this embarrassment of riches there is just no excuse for not opening a book and delving into Campbell’s imagined entertaining world. It will certainly make the hours flash by in these virus-constrained days.
Happy reading!