Tig's Crime

First novels usually contain lots of rough edges but, by brazenly adapting clichés from private eye stories, T. R. Burch has produced a thriller in which the strangeness and tension outweigh the faults. One foggy night, 14-year-old Tig witnesses a robbery and finds a body --- but when he tells the law, the corpse has gone. Though Tig, rather than the plodding policemen, sorts it out, the book retains a fair degree of authenticity and is in no way a Kiddie Lit detective yarn like Terrance Dicks' series, the Baker Street Irregulars, or Burch's own Shane McKellar books. Worth pushing in secondary schools.