Jacob Polley

Shortly after a despicable crime has been committed, young teenage schoolboy Christopher Hearsey learns that his best mate Arthur has gone missing. What he has heard from local tough guy Bobby leads him to believe that Gill, who lives down the road, may know something about it. Christopher strikes up an unlikely alliance with Gill as together they set out to try to find Arthur. But the next 24 hours will hold a few surprises, not all of them pleasant, for the two youngsters.

Christopher relates events of this last day before the new school year starts, and he records it in his Cumbrian voice, so it takes a page or two to acclimatise to the narrative. But the prose has a poetic ring to it, and we see the world through the eyes of the youngster as Jacob Polley succeeds admirably in getting inside the mind of Christopher. The eyes of an inevitably slightly naive lad, as he tries to put on an acceptable front of indifference while he is in fact helpless and out of his depth.

The story swings from near farce to tense drama as events gradually unfold. Nothing is quite as it first appears, and one's heart goes out to Christopher when he finally discovers the truth, yet he stoically caries the day.… (meer)