Scar Town

Scar Town by Tristan Bancks was the this year's winner of the CBCA Book of the Year for younger readers, and it thoroughly deserved it. At first I thought the cover made this book seem more like a young adult title, but the three protagonists are all twelve or thirteen, which puts it firmly in the younger category. However, the themes and events of the story do lean into older territory, with the kids finding human bones and ill-gotten money in the first chapter.

The pace never slackens -- the action takes place over only a couple of days. The chapters are very short and punchy, perfect for reluctant readers, hauling you through the story with one cliff hanger after another. There are thrills and perils, bike chases, quite a bit of violence, family drama and buried secrets, as Will and his friends fight to solve a mystery and keep ahead of the bad guys.

I was interested to read in the author's note that Bancks first came up with this story idea back in 2009. The plot hinges on a body and some money hidden in a house which has been long-drowned at the bottom of a dam and only revealed as the water dries up during a drought. Meg McKinley used a similar device in her terrific book Surface Tension, and I also based part of Crow Country around a dried-up lake. There is something gripping about that image of the past, especially past wrongs, being covered up but eventually revealed -- irresistible to a writer's imagination! And I'm sure we all saw the same stories and images of revealed ruins during the millenial drought; but just look at the very different kinds of plots we came up with.