Richie's Picks: BLANK CONFESSION by Pete Hautman, Simon & Schuster,
November 2010, 176p., ISBN: 978-1-4169-1327-6
"An angel on a Harley
Pulls across to meet a fellow rolling stone
Puts his bike up on its stand
Leans back and then extends
A scarred and greasy hand
He said, 'How ya doin' bro?'
'Where ya been?'
'Where ya goin'?'
Then he takes your hand
In some strange California handshake
And breaks the bone"
-- Roger Waters, "5.01 AM (The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, Pt. 10)"
"Rawls walked back down the hall, past the man in the suit, past the older
woman, past the prostitute. He stopped in front of the kid and waited for
him to look up. It took a few seconds. The kid's hair was thick, the
color of dried leaves, maybe three weeks past needing a cut. He slowly sat
back and raised his head to look directly into Rawl's eyes, his expression
devoid of all emotion.
"Rawls felt something throb deep within his gut. He had seen that
expression before, on other faces. The face of a mother who had lost her only
child. The face of a man who had just learned he would be spending the rest
of his life in prison. The face of a girl who woke up to find that she
would never walk again. A look of despair so deep and profound...it was as if
the connections between the mind and the face were severed, leaving only a
terrible blankness.
"He had seen that expression in other places too. The morgue. Funeral
parlors. Murder scenes.
"The face of the dead.
"But this boy was not dead. Somewhere behind those eyes there existed a
spark -- a spark that had brought him here, to this building, to this bench,
to George Rawls.
"'Are you Shayne?' Rawls asked."
This Shayne rides into town on an old, battered BMW motorcycle. He is a
mysterious teenage stranger with a string of contradictory stories about his
past and his parents.
This Shayne faces not a cattle baron but a drug dealer. A drug dealer who
is so scummy that he'll tase a little dog for the fun of it.
This Shayne comes to the aid of Mikey, an undersized teen who hides
himself behind a smart mouth and the gently-worn Bar Mitzvah suits he buys cheap
from a thrift store across town. Mikey's troubled big sister is dating the
drug dealer.
You know what is coming...so you think.
"Well we all have a face
That we hide away forever
And we take them out and
Show ourselves
When everyone has gone.
Some are satin some are steel
Some are silk and some are leather
They're the faces of the stranger
But we love to try them on."
-- Billy Joel
The story begins with Detective George Rawls meeting Shayne, who has
walked into the police station to confess to a murder. Starting with his
arrival in town, and told in turn by Shayne to Detective Rawls and by Mikey to
us, BLANK CONFESSION is a tale that is crafted so well that we never know
what surprise is coming next (or three moves from now).
With the manner in which Pete Hautman sucks us in so thoroughly from the
first paragraph onward, I'm betting that I can sell this one with equal ease
to a sixth grade boy, to my nineteen year-old daughter, and to an awful
lot of young people in between -- regardless of whether they are big readers
or reluctant readers. It is a book perfectly suited for both middle and
high school that is noteworthy, outstanding, and a hell of a great read.
In fact, if this one does not easily garner a triple crown -- Notable
Children's Books, Best Fiction for Young Adults, and Quick Picks for Reluctant
Young Adult Readers, Detective George Rawls won't be the only one sitting
there scratching his head.
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks _http://richiespicks.com_ (http://richiespicks.com/)
BudNotBuddy@aol.com
Moderator _http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_school_lit/_
(http://groups.yahoo.com/middle_school_lit/)
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(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EcolIt/)
_http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/people/faculty/partingtonr/partingtonr.php_
(http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/people/faculty/partingtonr/partingtonr.php)
FTC NOTICE: Richie receives free books from lots of publishers who hope he
will Pick their books. You can figure that any review was written after
reading and dog-earring a free copy received. Richie retains these review
copies for his rereading pleasure and for use in his booktalks at schools
and libraries.
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