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'The Blue Door'
Shamus award-winning writer David Fullmer has created a grand new character in his latest book, "The Blue Door."
"Fast Eddie" Cero is a pretty fair welterweight boxer who gives up the ring after a head butt reopens a cut that can no longer be repaired. When he decks a couple of punks who are beating up an older guy, the guy offers him a part-time job in his private detective business. Eddie signs up because he needs the money, but soon gets the knack and starts investigating on his own the three-year-old disappearance of Johnny Pope, lead singer for the Excels, a great Philadelphia blues ensemble.
"The Blue Door" is full of great characters: Eddie, his boss Sal, the vulgar, oily producer of StarLite records, the malicious Cajun who took him out of the ring. One of the most beguiling characters in the book is the setting, South Philly in the '60s, where the story takes place and where music, boxing and mayhem combine for unforgettable first-round action from a beguiling private eye.
"The Blue Door" is quite language-y, as befits the setting and circumstances. Just a friendly warning.
'The White Darkness'
Sym, a 14-year-old, hearing-impaired girl who thinks her dead father didn't love her, is obsessed with Antarctica, thanks in part to her "Uncle" Victor's interest and the polar regions books he gave her for every birthday. Tormented at school, Sym is delighted when Victor (her father's former business partner) offers to take her and her mother to Paris for a three-day, two-night vacation. But when they arrive at the station, Sym's mom can't find her passport, so Sym and Victor leave alone.
Victor's "Paris" vacation is a ruse, as it turns out, to get Sym to Antarctica, but her excitement soon turns to dismay and then to a fight for her life when Uncle Victor's true self and true plans are revealed. Lucky for Sym she has with her Titus Oates, one of the five explorers who died in Rober Falcon Scott's second Antarctic expedition, but who lives on in her mind as an extraordinary presence in this virtuoso novel of adventure and psychological suspense.
Winner of the American Library Association's 2008 Michael Printz Award for best young adult novel, "The White Darkness" was obviously originally written for a British audience that would be familiar with Scott's second expedition. Some knowledge of that tragic journey makes this tale much richer and more accessible, and McCaughrean has added a postscript -- Scott of the Antarctic -- which she suggests should be reviewed in advance to help frame the story for anyone unfamiliar with polar exploration.
"The White Darkness" is a richly imagined, beautifully well-written story that should lead many readers to the original story.
• Laura Wadley is a librarian with the Provo City Library. E-mail her at
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