I wanted to like this more than I did, because the idea of western featuring an autistic kid detective sounds like a good original idea. However (and I might be being oversensitive), the racial/gender issues were too much for me to overlook, and I found myself wondering who I could ever recommend this book to ("Well, it features numerous horrible stereotypes about Native Americans, and one time they straight up calls a lady a whore. And he sees two people having sex!"). Plus, I'd just read By the Great Horn Spoon! which was just a much more fun kids' western. I would've given this three stars because it was a good mystery, but I'm knocking it down a star for the rest of the faults. ( )

My boys enjoyed the suspense, the surprises, the mystery.
I'm glad I read it out loud, so that I could skip some parts that weren't child-friendly. (i.e. how the Soiled Dove stored her money, although in keeping with the times, and character, the description was more than what I would want my boys to think about.)
We looked for more in the series and were disappointed that we couldn't locate them. ( )

I was given this by my editor to show me what could be done in a mid-grade novel, and I'm bloody glad of it. Lawrence acknowledges her debt to Charles Portis, as well she should. True Grit is one of my favourite novels, and this is a worthy homage. Our young is half-Indian, autistic and on the run after his adoptive parents are horribly murdered by the deadly desperados. There follows a wild chase from the small town where PK lives via the back of a stagecoach, through the Chinese laundries, saloons, bordellos, newspaper offices, muddy streets and shops of Virginia to the bottom of a pitch-black mine-shaft, with a few rare pauses for breath to ponder the mystery of what they're after and why and encounter a few of the colourful folk living there, some considerably less trustworthy than others. Vividly entertaining, this manages to stay grounded while keeping things age-appropriate with a few sly wry nods to grown-up readers. ( )

This book is a fun, western adventure set back in the 1800s before Nevada was a state. ( )

P.K. Pinkerton's debut. ( )