Crookhaven: The School for Thieves

Gabriel Avery is a pickpocket.  He has to be. He lives with his grandma, who isn’t really his grandma but took him in as a baby when his parents abandoned him in the swanky hotel where she was a maid, and money is short.  With his olive skin, he’s out of place in the little West Country town where they live too. Everything changes however, when he picks the pocket of a man at the station because it turns out the man has picked Gabriel’s pocket too of the strange, scorched 2p coin that was the only thing his parents left behind.  He left some notes for Gabriel as well, which send him to Crookhaven, school for wrongdoers, swindlers and thieves. And his new home!

An orphan with special talents and a hidden destiny finds himself summoned to an elite school where he makes close friends and begins to learn about his secret past…  We might have been here before but this school for criminals is very appealing indeed and not since the screen version of Oliver Twist has pickpocketing seemed such an attractive art. The plot is full of twists and turns, and cracks along at a very satisfying pace, and Crookhaven is definitely somewhere readers will want to spend time. Gabriel’s team of friends – I particularly liked twins, super-computer-hackers Ade and Ede – are genuine characters and very relatable. It’s reassuring that even when you’ve got to pick a pocket or two, boys, you know you’re being taught to do wrong, so that one day you can put the world to right. The first in a series, this should find lots of readers.