From Booklist
Gr. 6-9. The plot may not be entirely watertight, but fans of melodramatic crime dramas will suck up this rain-soaked page-turner in the Traces series. Set in a decrepit alternate or future London where whites are a persecuted minority, the story features teenage forensic investigator Luke Harding and his robot sidekick. Called on to look into a doctor's murder, Luke finds himself trailing a serial killer into a world of slums, exotic snakes, and an illegal Brown Supremacist cult that meets in the decaying Underground. While folding in plenty of action and on-stage violence, Rose calls on his background as a chemistry professor to provide specific scent and residue clues, and gives Luke an amusingly literal-minded robot companion, a clever foe, and a subplot involving a love interest before wrapping things up with a dose of just deserts. The offbeat but well-envisioned locales bode well for future episodes. See
Naughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman on p.1796 for another take on a society where minority roles are reversed.
John PetersCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
