Stars: Aaron Johnson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloe Grace Moretz, Nicolas Cage

Inspired by comic books, Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), an ordinary teenager, decides to become Kick-Ass, a masked vigilante and soon discovers he’s not the only crime fighter roaming the streets of New York, when he encounters the far more competent father-daughter team of Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and Hit Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) and the ultra-flashy Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). However, when Kick-Ass comes to the attention of Frank D’Amico, a local mafia boss, he becomes drawn into a world far more dangerous than he ever imagined and must become the superhero he dreams of being or die trying.

In the last week, I have watched two superhero films: The Avengers and Kick-Ass; and although Kick-Ass didn’t make even a fraction of what The Avengers made at the box office (at the time of writing, The Avengers is the third-highest grossing film of all time), as far as I’m concerned, it is by far the superior film.

While all hugely successful, the recent string of movies based on Marvel comics has been rather hit and miss. Iron Man was excellent (with one of the most memorable endings of a superhero movie ever), as was X-Men: First Class, but some of the other films have felt more like extended television episodes than proper movies in their own right (I’m thinking of you, Iron Man 2). The Avengers sits somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.

In spite of taking way too long to get going (largely due to the fact that each of the four main superheroes must be introduced one by one and given roughly equal screen-time – I’m guessing this was some sort of contractual thing), when The Avengers does finally get to the point, the action scenes are pretty awesome, and there are a number of moments in Joss Whedon’s script that are laugh-aloud funny. Yet, in spite of the fact that Thor, Iron Man, the Hulk and Captain America are all fighting to save the planet on which I live from an alien invasion, at no point in the film’s 143 minute run time did I actually care as to whether or not they were going to succeed. This is because, in spite of having the greatest physical goal imaginable, none of the Avengers have anything at stake emotionally. Saving the world is just a job for them and they have nothing to prove or change in their lives. It’s the “why” that makes us care about a character, be it saving the world in order to ask out the girl/guy of their dreams or killing the bad guy in order to avenge the death of a loved one. You can have all the wisecracks and special effects in the world, but without a good “why”, a movie is nothing more than a hollow shell destined to be forgotten as soon as you leave the cinema. And this is why Kick-Ass outdoes The Avengers.

Part teen angst comedy, part ultra-violent superhero parody, with Kick-Ass we are presented with a superhero it is impossible not to like. Unlike the Avengers, Dave Lizewski has no special powers or skills, but he still goes out and fights crime because of his twin desires to make a difference to the world and to get the girl of his dreams to notice him. Those are goals that ordinary people can understand and as such, we want him to win. In fact, every major character in Kick-Ass is motivated by something more complex than “I’m doing this because that’s just what I do,” and as a result, we want them to get the happy endings that they so richly deserve.

That’s not to say that happy endings are inevitable for these characters. Mark Millar’s graphic novel upon which the movie is based is actually pretty bleak and depressing and does not deliver on this front, leaving some readers (i.e. me) feeling bummed out at the end of reading it. Nevertheless, bleak and depressing does not a successful Hollywood blockbuster make and screenwriter/director Matthew Vaughn (who, incidentally, also co-wrote and directed X-Men: First Class) has the good sense to replace the comic’s loneliness and despair with optimism and hope, improving the story dramatically and turning it into a feel-good film that will leave you grinning for days after watching it.

Verdict: As well as providing Nicolas Cage with his best role in years, this tale of an underdog with good intentions is one of the best superhero films of the last decade and runs circles around mega-hits such as The Avengers.

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Stars: Aaron Johnson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloe Grace Moretz, Nicolas Cage

Inspired by comic books, Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), an ordinary teenager, decides to become Kick-Ass, a masked vigilante and soon discovers he’s not the only crime fighter roaming the streets of New York, when he encounters the far more competent father-daughter team of Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and Hit Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) and the ultra-flashy Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). However, when Kick-Ass comes to the attention of Frank D’Amico, a local mafia boss, he becomes drawn into a world far more dangerous than he ever imagined and must become the superhero he dreams of being or die trying.

In the last week, I have watched two superhero films: The Avengers and Kick-Ass; and although Kick-Ass didn’t make even a fraction of what The Avengers made at the box office (at the time of writing, The Avengers is the third-highest grossing film of all time), as far as I’m concerned, it is by far the superior film.

While all hugely successful, the recent string of movies based on Marvel comics has been rather hit and miss. Iron Man was excellent (with one of the most memorable endings of a superhero movie ever), as was X-Men: First Class, but some of the other films have felt more like extended television episodes than proper movies in their own right (I’m thinking of you, Iron Man 2). The Avengers sits somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.

In spite of taking way too long to get going (largely due to the fact that each of the four main superheroes must be introduced one by one and given roughly equal screen-time – I’m guessing this was some sort of contractual thing), when The Avengers does finally get to the point, the action scenes are pretty awesome, and there are a number of moments in Joss Whedon’s script that are laugh-aloud funny. Yet, in spite of the fact that Thor, Iron Man, the Hulk and Captain America are all fighting to save the planet on which I live from an alien invasion, at no point in the film’s 143 minute run time did I actually care as to whether or not they were going to succeed. This is because, in spite of having the greatest physical goal imaginable, none of the Avengers have anything at stake emotionally. Saving the world is just a job for them and they have nothing to prove or change in their lives. It’s the “why” that makes us care about a character, be it saving the world in order to ask out the girl/guy of their dreams or killing the bad guy in order to avenge the death of a loved one. You can have all the wisecracks and special effects in the world, but without a good “why”, a movie is nothing more than a hollow shell destined to be forgotten as soon as you leave the cinema. And this is why Kick-Ass outdoes The Avengers.

Part teen angst comedy, part ultra-violent superhero parody, with Kick-Ass we are presented with a superhero it is impossible not to like. Unlike the Avengers, Dave Lizewski has no special powers or skills, but he still goes out and fights crime because of his twin desires to make a difference to the world and to get the girl of his dreams to notice him. Those are goals that ordinary people can understand and as such, we want him to win. In fact, every major character in Kick-Ass is motivated by something more complex than “I’m doing this because that’s just what I do,” and as a result, we want them to get the happy endings that they so richly deserve.

That’s not to say that happy endings are inevitable for these characters. Mark Millar’s graphic novel upon which the movie is based is actually pretty bleak and depressing and does not deliver on this front, leaving some readers (i.e. me) feeling bummed out at the end of reading it. Nevertheless, bleak and depressing does not a successful Hollywood blockbuster make and screenwriter/director Matthew Vaughn (who, incidentally, also co-wrote and directed X-Men: First Class) has the good sense to replace the comic’s loneliness and despair with optimism and hope, improving the story dramatically and turning it into a feel-good film that will leave you grinning for days after watching it.

Verdict: As well as providing Nicolas Cage with his best role in years, this tale of an underdog with good intentions is one of the best superhero films of the last decade and runs circles around mega-hits such as The Avengers.

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Shortly after arriving on an isolated island for a weekend-long party, a group of ten teenagers start dying one by one. Unable to find anyone else on the island, and with the body count rising, the teens are soon faced with the reality that the deaths are no accident and that one of them may be a murderer.

The book I’ve just described is Ten by Gretchen McNeil, which is essentially just a teenage update of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. However, with a few minor word changes, I could just as easily have been describing Devil (And Then There Were None in an elevator), Legion (And Then There Were None in space), Harper’s Island (And Then There Were None on a larger scale, with 29 victims and only 4 survivors) or Identity (And Then There Were None with an even bigger twist than Agatha Christie first imagined), to name just a few. Let’s face it, since it was first published in 1939, And Then There Were None has been adapted/paid tribute to/ripped off a lot of times, but that’s not really surprising since, in spite of its age, And Then There Were None is still one of the best mysteries stories around.

In writing And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie broke the traditional murder mystery mould and created the set-up that would later be used with much success for a significant proportion of the teenage slasher movies made from the late 1970’s onwards (think Scream, right down to the ‘you sin, you die’ motive). Instead of a murder being committed and a detective being called in to solve it, there is no clear detective in And Then There Were None, just a bunch of characters who are all just as likely to be the killer or his next victim, and who are too busy turning on each other and trying to stay alive to do any real investigating. Sound familiar? The constant stream of victims keeps the tension high and the story moving, while the lack of a detective within the novel makes the situation more dangerous. There is no saviour to step in at the last minute, just a bunch of scared characters and a killer. Christie also invented one of the great mystery plot twists with this book (at least, until it got used a hundred times and everyone saw it coming).

Getting back to Gretchen McNeil’s Ten, although I had no difficulties in finishing the book, and quite enjoyed it (in spite of the fact that the writing’s nothing special and the main character’s best friend, Minnie, was so annoying I kept wishing the killer would choose her next), for those familiar with And Then There Were None, it offers nothing new. All of the key plot points are identical and if you know the signature plot twist, you can guess the killer’s identity pretty early on. All that is left for the reader to do is to guess the order in which the murders are going to occur.

I don’t have any problems with Gretchen McNeil borrowing her plot from Agatha Christie, but her book would have been a lot better if she had been able to add something of her own to the mix. Harper’s Island and Identity both managed to do that (and Devil to a certain extent, although less so), and in the process, distanced themselves from their source material and became strong stories in their own right. By simply changing the age of the characters, McNeil’s novel is rendered little more than an acceptable homage to a much better classic. Read it by all means, but then read the original.

Verdict: An entertaining read, but if you’ve already read And Then There Were None, don’t expect anything new.

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Shortly after arriving on an isolated island for a weekend-long party, a group of ten teenagers start dying one by one. Unable to find anyone else on the island, and with the body count rising, the teens are soon faced with the reality that the deaths are no accident and that one of them may be a murderer.

The book I’ve just described is Ten by Gretchen McNeil, which is essentially just a teenage update of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. However, with a few minor word changes, I could just as easily have been describing Devil (And Then There Were None in an elevator), Legion (And Then There Were None in space), Harper’s Island (And Then There Were None on a larger scale, with 29 victims and only 4 survivors) or Identity (And Then There Were None with an even bigger twist than Agatha Christie first imagined), to name just a few. Let’s face it, since it was first published in 1939, And Then There Were None has been adapted/paid tribute to/ripped off a lot of times, but that’s not really surprising since, in spite of its age, And Then There Were None is still one of the best mysteries stories around.

In writing And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie broke the traditional murder mystery mould and created the set-up that would later be used with much success for a significant proportion of the teenage slasher movies made from the late 1970’s onwards (think Scream, right down to the ‘you sin, you die’ motive). Instead of a murder being committed and a detective being called in to solve it, there is no clear detective in And Then There Were None, just a bunch of characters who are all just as likely to be the killer or his next victim, and who are too busy turning on each other and trying to stay alive to do any real investigating. Sound familiar? The constant stream of victims keeps the tension high and the story moving, while the lack of a detective within the novel makes the situation more dangerous. There is no saviour to step in at the last minute, just a bunch of scared characters and a killer. Christie also invented one of the great mystery plot twists with this book (at least, until it got used a hundred times and everyone saw it coming).

Getting back to Gretchen McNeil’s Ten, although I had no difficulties in finishing the book, and quite enjoyed it (in spite of the fact that the writing’s nothing special and the main character’s best friend, Minnie, was so annoying I kept wishing the killer would choose her next), for those familiar with And Then There Were None, it offers nothing new. All of the key plot points are identical and if you know the signature plot twist, you can guess the killer’s identity pretty early on. All that is left for the reader to do is to guess the order in which the murders are going to occur.

I don’t have any problems with Gretchen McNeil borrowing her plot from Agatha Christie, but her book would have been a lot better if she had been able to add something of her own to the mix. Harper’s Island and Identity both managed to do that (and Devil to a certain extent, although less so), and in the process, distanced themselves from their source material and became strong stories in their own right. By simply changing the age of the characters, McNeil’s novel is rendered little more than an acceptable homage to a much better classic. Read it by all means, but then read the original.

Verdict: An entertaining read, but if you’ve already read And Then There Were None, don’t expect anything new.

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Stars: Julian Morris, Lindy Booth, Jared Padalecki, Jon Bon Jovi, Gary Cole

Having been kicked out of his previous school for bad behaviour, Owen Matthews (Julian Morris) finds himself at Westlake Prep, where he falls in with a group of students, led by the beautiful but manipulative Dodger (Lindy Booth), who meet up at night to play “the lying game”. In order to impress Dodger, Owen convinces the group to start a rumour that the recent murder of a local girl in the nearby woods was, in fact, the work of a serial killer, the Wolf, and that more deaths will follow. However, things take a frightening turn for the worse when the rumour starts coming true, with Owen’s friends the Wolf’s victims.

Back in 2005, I went to see Cry Wolf at the cinema and hated it. I went in expecting a blood and gore filled teen slasher in the vein of Scream or I Know What You Did Last Summer and came away disappointed. It probably didn’t help that it was one of the first “horror” movies I had encountered with a US PG-13 rating - the kiss of death among horror fans. After getting into Supernatural a couple of years later, however, I decided to give Cry Wolf a second chance, if only to see Jared Padalecki in an early role, and surprised myself by loving it to the point where I have now seen it five or six times.

The problem with Cry Wolf is that it was marketed as a Scream-type slasher film when it is really a very clever thriller more akin to confidence trick stories like The Usual Suspects, Nine Queens or Hustle. The whole film is about a group of friends trying to con their classmates and each other. It just happens that the central premise of the con has to do with a serial killer.

As the title suggests, this film owes a lot to the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, and as with the eponymous boy, once the con is revealed for what it is, no one will believe those who started it, leaving them helpless when a killer arrives on campus. Yet, even when the Wolf does arrive and the bodies start mounting up, the focus of this film remains on Owen (and the audience) figuring out what is and isn’t real, rather than on gory set pieces. The ending, where everything is finally revealed, is great, and makes this film rank as one of my favourite con films of all time.

Cry Wolf was the independent first feature of writer-director Jeff Wadlow and his writing partner Beau Bauman, so it never received all that much attention on its release and has largely been forgotten in the eight years since then. Yet, the fact that an independent movie actually managed to attract a big name like Jon Bon Jovi (whether you like him or not, as an actor, you have to admit that you’ve heard of him) and get a mainstream cinema release as far afield as Australia is testament to its quality. Furthermore, since its release, both Julian Morris and Jared Padaleki have gone on to bigger and better things as actors, and Jeff Wadlow has gone on to become writer and director of the upcoming Kick-Ass 2. They might have been nobodies at the time, but they’re much more than that now and this film contributed to that success.

If you go into Cry Wolf expecting a high body count, then like me the first time I saw it, you’re probably not going to like it, but if you go into it thinking of it as one big confidence trick played by the writers on the audience, then this film totally rocks!

Verdict: Avoid suspicion, manipulate your friends, eliminate your enemies and watch this film.

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Stars: Julian Morris, Lindy Booth, Jared Padalecki, Jon Bon Jovi, Gary Cole

Having been kicked out of his previous school for bad behaviour, Owen Matthews (Julian Morris) finds himself at Westlake Prep, where he falls in with a group of students, led by the beautiful but manipulative Dodger (Lindy Booth), who meet up at night to play “the lying game”. In order to impress Dodger, Owen convinces the group to start a rumour that the recent murder of a local girl in the nearby woods was, in fact, the work of a serial killer, the Wolf, and that more deaths will follow. However, things take a frightening turn for the worse when the rumour starts coming true, with Owen’s friends the Wolf’s victims.

Back in 2005, I went to see Cry Wolf at the cinema and hated it. I went in expecting a blood and gore filled teen slasher in the vein of Scream or I Know What You Did Last Summer and came away disappointed. It probably didn’t help that it was one of the first “horror” movies I had encountered with a US PG-13 rating - the kiss of death among horror fans. After getting into Supernatural a couple of years later, however, I decided to give Cry Wolf a second chance, if only to see Jared Padalecki in an early role, and surprised myself by loving it to the point where I have now seen it five or six times.

The problem with Cry Wolf is that it was marketed as a Scream-type slasher film when it is really a very clever thriller more akin to confidence trick stories like The Usual Suspects, Nine Queens or Hustle. The whole film is about a group of friends trying to con their classmates and each other. It just happens that the central premise of the con has to do with a serial killer.

As the title suggests, this film owes a lot to the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, and as with the eponymous boy, once the con is revealed for what it is, no one will believe those who started it, leaving them helpless when a killer arrives on campus. Yet, even when the Wolf does arrive and the bodies start mounting up, the focus of this film remains on Owen (and the audience) figuring out what is and isn’t real, rather than on gory set pieces. The ending, where everything is finally revealed, is great, and makes this film rank as one of my favourite con films of all time.

Cry Wolf was the independent first feature of writer-director Jeff Wadlow and his writing partner Beau Bauman, so it never received all that much attention on its release and has largely been forgotten in the eight years since then. Yet, the fact that an independent movie actually managed to attract a big name like Jon Bon Jovi (whether you like him or not, as an actor, you have to admit that you’ve heard of him) and get a mainstream cinema release as far afield as Australia is testament to its quality. Furthermore, since its release, both Julian Morris and Jared Padaleki have gone on to bigger and better things as actors, and Jeff Wadlow has gone on to become writer and director of the upcoming Kick-Ass 2. They might have been nobodies at the time, but they’re much more than that now and this film contributed to that success.

If you go into Cry Wolf expecting a high body count, then like me the first time I saw it, you’re probably not going to like it, but if you go into it thinking of it as one big confidence trick played by the writers on the audience, then this film totally rocks!

Verdict: Avoid suspicion, manipulate your friends, eliminate your enemies and watch this film.

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Sylvia (Vee) Bell can get into other people’s heads. Literally. Vee has narcolepsy and whenever she passes out, she “slides” into someone else’s head and sees through their eyes. This is bad enough, but when Vee slides into the head of a killer, who is standing next to the dead body of her sister’s best friend, Sophie, her whole world spins out of control. With Sophie’s death ruled a suicide and Vee unable to tell people how she knows it’s not, she is left with no alternative but to use her gift to solve the murder herself.

Having mentioned Slide, one of my favourite books of 2012, several times already on this blog and given the sequel, Imposter, was released in late March, I thought it was about time I got around to reviewing it.

Slide is like The Dead Zone for teens, but without the apocalypse theme and with more interesting supporting characters. In Stephen King’s The Dead Zone (both the book and the TV series), Johnny Smith develops the ability to see visions of the future (or in some cases, the past) when he touches certain objects or people. He then uses these abilities to help the police, among other things. Vee Bell’s abilities aren’t that far removed from Johnny Smith’s. Like Smith, her abilities are based on touch. To slide into someone’s head, she needs to be touching something that person has previously held. She also uses her abilities to help solve a crime – in this case, the death of her sister’s friend – but unlike Smith, since Vee is a teenager, no one believes that her gift is real and she is forced to do her investigations by herself, without any police assistance.

Vee’s investigations in themselves make for pretty exciting reading. Truth be told, with the exception of The Dead Zone, I haven’t come across a gimmick like this before and definitely not in YA fiction. Furthermore, Vee’s gift, although similar to Johnny Smith’s, is not identical. From memory, in The Dead Zone, Smith only saw cryptic images of the future, which he couldn’t directly control, while Vee’s visions are more like watching a movie which she does have limited control over. So, Slide is a fairly original take on the mystery genre and one which Hathaway has used to great success. Instead of hunting for clues like a normal detective, Vee investigates psychically.

However, what made Slide one of my 2012 favourites were the characters. Because Vee can see through other people’s eyes, she is able to see aspects of their lives that they would otherwise keep hidden. This gives more depth and backstory to the supporting characters than is usually possible in a first-person narrative. In particular, Vee’s best friend Rollins, a long-haired, leather jacket wearing loner, is raised above the level of standard not-so-secretly-in-love best friend (a la Ducky from Pretty in Pink) to a complex and very sympathetic character in his own right. I eagerly await Imposter just to read more about him.

As with most YA novels, Slide has its fair share of “teen issues.” Suicide, date rape and family relationships all raise their heads. I assume Vee’s name is a reference to Sylvia Plath, the suicidal author of The Bell Jar, which ties in neatly with this. Nevertheless, these themes are all necessary to the plot and Hathaway has the good sense to keep the mystery at the forefront of the story, so her novel never starts feeling like an episode of Degrassi (not that there’s anything wrong with Degrassi).

Slide is a great start to what I’m sure will be a very promising career for Jill Hathaway. She is an author whose writing I will be following intently in the years to come.

Verdict: Worth reading for the characters alone, Slide is a fresh take on the psychic as detective gimmick previously used in The Dead Zone.

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Sylvia (Vee) Bell can get into other people’s heads. Literally. Vee has narcolepsy and whenever she passes out, she “slides” into someone else’s head and sees through their eyes. This is bad enough, but when Vee slides into the head of a killer, who is standing next to the dead body of her sister’s best friend, Sophie, her whole world spins out of control. With Sophie’s death ruled a suicide and Vee unable to tell people how she knows it’s not, she is left with no alternative but to use her gift to solve the murder herself.

Having mentioned Slide, one of my favourite books of 2012, several times already on this blog and given the sequel, Imposter, was released in late March, I thought it was about time I got around to reviewing it.

Slide is like The Dead Zone for teens, but without the apocalypse theme and with more interesting supporting characters. In Stephen King’s The Dead Zone (both the book and the TV series), Johnny Smith develops the ability to see visions of the future (or in some cases, the past) when he touches certain objects or people. He then uses these abilities to help the police, among other things. Vee Bell’s abilities aren’t that far removed from Johnny Smith’s. Like Smith, her abilities are based on touch. To slide into someone’s head, she needs to be touching something that person has previously held. She also uses her abilities to help solve a crime – in this case, the death of her sister’s friend – but unlike Smith, since Vee is a teenager, no one believes that her gift is real and she is forced to do her investigations by herself, without any police assistance.

Vee’s investigations in themselves make for pretty exciting reading. Truth be told, with the exception of The Dead Zone, I haven’t come across a gimmick like this before and definitely not in YA fiction. Furthermore, Vee’s gift, although similar to Johnny Smith’s, is not identical. From memory, in The Dead Zone, Smith only saw cryptic images of the future, which he couldn’t directly control, while Vee’s visions are more like watching a movie which she does have limited control over. So, Slide is a fairly original take on the mystery genre and one which Hathaway has used to great success. Instead of hunting for clues like a normal detective, Vee investigates psychically.

However, what made Slide one of my 2012 favourites were the characters. Because Vee can see through other people’s eyes, she is able to see aspects of their lives that they would otherwise keep hidden. This gives more depth and backstory to the supporting characters than is usually possible in a first-person narrative. In particular, Vee’s best friend Rollins, a long-haired, leather jacket wearing loner, is raised above the level of standard not-so-secretly-in-love best friend (a la Ducky from Pretty in Pink) to a complex and very sympathetic character in his own right. I eagerly await Imposter just to read more about him.

As with most YA novels, Slide has its fair share of “teen issues.” Suicide, date rape and family relationships all raise their heads. I assume Vee’s name is a reference to Sylvia Plath, the suicidal author of The Bell Jar, which ties in neatly with this. Nevertheless, these themes are all necessary to the plot and Hathaway has the good sense to keep the mystery at the forefront of the story, so her novel never starts feeling like an episode of Degrassi (not that there’s anything wrong with Degrassi).

Slide is a great start to what I’m sure will be a very promising career for Jill Hathaway. She is an author whose writing I will be following intently in the years to come.

Verdict: Worth reading for the characters alone, Slide is a fresh take on the psychic as detective gimmick previously used in The Dead Zone.

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Stars: Chris Hemsworth, Kristen Connolly, Fran Kranz, Richard Jenkins, Bradley Whitford

 

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Ignoring the warnings of a creepy gas station attendant, five college students: a jock; a blonde; a geek; a stoner; and a virgin; go for a weekend away to an isolated cabin in the middle of the woods. While there, they discover an old diary and recite a passage from it in Latin. This results in them accidentally raising a family of redneck torture zombies, who proceed to kill them all, one by one. Oh, and by the way, did I mention, all of this is being remotely monitored by a group of technicians in a high-tech control room, who are secretly influencing the outcome of the events.

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Stars: Chris Hemsworth, Kristen Connolly, Fran Kranz, Richard Jenkins, Bradley Whitford

 

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Ignoring the warnings of a creepy gas station attendant, five college students: a jock; a blonde; a geek; a stoner; and a virgin; go for a weekend away to an isolated cabin in the middle of the woods. While there, they discover an old diary and recite a passage from it in Latin. This results in them accidentally raising a family of redneck torture zombies, who proceed to kill them all, one by one. Oh, and by the way, did I mention, all of this is being remotely monitored by a group of technicians in a high-tech control room, who are secretly influencing the outcome of the events.

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In order to pay for a photography course she desperately wants to attend, Sage takes a part-time job at a supposedly haunted theatre working for The Great Armand, a once great stage magician who has now been reduced to performing school holiday magic shows for kids. Sage soon finds herself enjoying her new job and becoming good friends with magician’s assistant Bianca and stagehand Herb. However, when Sage accidentally breaks a wand on stage, bringing down a curse on the group, and shortly afterwards Armand goes missing, Sage must uncover the secrets of the old theatre before she too is made to disappear – permanently.

Australian author Lili Wilkinson has really nailed the YA geek girl novel. Starting back in 2008 with The (Not Quite) Perfect Boyfriend (about spelling-bee champion Midge who invents an imaginary boyfriend in order to impress her best friend while at the same time falling in love with a nerdy fantasy geek), Wilkinson has subsequently perfected the genre with Pink (former goth Ava decides to reinvent herself by transferring to the Billy Hughes School of Academic Excellence); A Pocketful of Eyes (while working a summer job at the taxidermy department of a museum, mystery fan Bee investigates the death of her supervisor); Love Shy (aspiring journalist Penny gets more than she bargained for when she sets out to discover the identity of a love-shy classmate) and now The Zigzag Effect.

Wilkinson’s books follow a simple formula: they’re light-hearted; the heroine is always smart, with an unusual hobby or interest; there is an equally geeky boy who falls instantly in love with our heroine in between spouting quirky facts; and much kissing is used to fill in the dead places in the plot. Normally, I would avoid books this girlie like the plague, except for the fact that YA books with smart, geeky female protagonists are hard to come by, and they’re actually pretty good.

As with A Pocketful of Eyes, in The Zigzag Effect Wilkinson adds to her formula by also giving her heroine a mystery to solve. The mystery in The Zigzag Effect is, admittedly, not as front and centre as in A Pocketful of Eyes – a missing magician is easier to overlook than a dead supervisor - but this simply gives Wilkinson the opportunity to explore the other equally fascinating aspects of her story, including the ghost of the theatre in which Sage works and the world of professional magic. As someone who spent her childhood dreaming of growing up to be a magician, I actually found the descriptions of magic tricks and life in the magic community to be the best part of this book (Wilkinson has certainly done her research in this respect) and I particularly appreciated Wilkinson’s decision to draw attention to the importance of magician’s assistants (who are cut up and tied up on a nightly basis) and how poorly they can be treated – something which is rarely mentioned in other books about magicians and which I had never given any thought to.

I’m not sure how much longer Wilkinson will be able to continue with her geek girl novels – after all, there are only so many unusual hobbies and jobs that teenage girls can have. However, as long as she keeps writing them, I will keep reading them, and if and when she moves onto something else, I will probably read that, too. The Zigzag Effect and A Pocketful of Eyes are like Nancy Drew novels for girls of the 21st Century, and although I’ve never subscribed to the notion that YA authors have an obligation to write characters who serve as role-models for their readers, in The Zigzag Effect, as with all of her other books, Wilkinson does an excellent job of achieving this.

Verdict: Although far girlier than my taste would normally dictate, this is, nevertheless, still the sort of  book I wish had been around when I was a teenager.

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In order to pay for a photography course she desperately wants to attend, Sage takes a part-time job at a supposedly haunted theatre working for The Great Armand, a once great stage magician who has now been reduced to performing school holiday magic shows for kids. Sage soon finds herself enjoying her new job and becoming good friends with magician’s assistant Bianca and stagehand Herb. However, when Sage accidentally breaks a wand on stage, bringing down a curse on the group, and shortly afterwards Armand goes missing, Sage must uncover the secrets of the old theatre before she too is made to disappear – permanently.

Australian author Lili Wilkinson has really nailed the YA geek girl novel. Starting back in 2008 with The (Not Quite) Perfect Boyfriend (about spelling-bee champion Midge who invents an imaginary boyfriend in order to impress her best friend while at the same time falling in love with a nerdy fantasy geek), Wilkinson has subsequently perfected the genre with Pink (former goth Ava decides to reinvent herself by transferring to the Billy Hughes School of Academic Excellence); A Pocketful of Eyes (while working a summer job at the taxidermy department of a museum, mystery fan Bee investigates the death of her supervisor); Love Shy (aspiring journalist Penny gets more than she bargained for when she sets out to discover the identity of a love-shy classmate) and now The Zigzag Effect.

Wilkinson’s books follow a simple formula: they’re light-hearted; the heroine is always smart, with an unusual hobby or interest; there is an equally geeky boy who falls instantly in love with our heroine in between spouting quirky facts; and much kissing is used to fill in the dead places in the plot. Normally, I would avoid books this girlie like the plague, except for the fact that YA books with smart, geeky female protagonists are hard to come by, and they’re actually pretty good.

As with A Pocketful of Eyes, in The Zigzag Effect Wilkinson adds to her formula by also giving her heroine a mystery to solve. The mystery in The Zigzag Effect is, admittedly, not as front and centre as in A Pocketful of Eyes – a missing magician is easier to overlook than a dead supervisor - but this simply gives Wilkinson the opportunity to explore the other equally fascinating aspects of her story, including the ghost of the theatre in which Sage works and the world of professional magic. As someone who spent her childhood dreaming of growing up to be a magician, I actually found the descriptions of magic tricks and life in the magic community to be the best part of this book (Wilkinson has certainly done her research in this respect) and I particularly appreciated Wilkinson’s decision to draw attention to the importance of magician’s assistants (who are cut up and tied up on a nightly basis) and how poorly they can be treated – something which is rarely mentioned in other books about magicians and which I had never given any thought to.

I’m not sure how much longer Wilkinson will be able to continue with her geek girl novels – after all, there are only so many unusual hobbies and jobs that teenage girls can have. However, as long as she keeps writing them, I will keep reading them, and if and when she moves onto something else, I will probably read that, too. The Zigzag Effect and A Pocketful of Eyes are like Nancy Drew novels for girls of the 21st Century, and although I’ve never subscribed to the notion that YA authors have an obligation to write characters who serve as role-models for their readers, in The Zigzag Effect, as with all of her other books, Wilkinson does an excellent job of achieving this.

Verdict: Although far girlier than my taste would normally dictate, this is, nevertheless, still the sort of  book I wish had been around when I was a teenager.

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Stars: Ana Torrent, Fele Martinez, Eduado Noriega.
Language: Spanish

While researching her Honours thesis on audio-visual violence, overachiever Angela (Ana Torrent) enlists the help of Chema (Fele Martinez), a freakish loner who collects ultra-violent movies. But when the pair stumble across a video that appears to show the brutal murder of a fellow student, they soon find themselves the targets of an on-campus snuff ring.

Before achieving international fame with The Others, writer/director Alejandro Amenabar launched his career with Tesis, an American-style horror-thriller that earned seven Goya awards (the Spanish equivalent of the Oscars), including Best Film and Best Original Screenplay, in his home country of Spain. Pretty impressive for a first-time film maker, especially considering the prejudice normally shown towards the horror genre.

Tesis is a well-written, well-acted movie that works on a number of different levels. If all you’re after is a straight-up horror-thriller, then Tesis delivers that. Amenabar himself admits to borrowing many of the techniques used throughout the film from Hollywood. Furthermore, Tesis is one hell of a mystery. Amenabar places Angela at the apex of a love triangle, with Chema and good-looking but dangerous Bosco (Eduardo Noriega), then spends the rest of the film shifting the audience’s suspicions as to the identity of the killer between the two (or is it someone completely different?). However, through the character of Angela, Amenabar also explores the simultaneous attraction and repulsion the viewing public has towards violent images.

In spite of its subject matter, Tesis is not a gore film. At a number of points throughout the film, it appears that Amenabar is about to show the audience some particularly grisly sight, only for the camera to pull away just at the last moment; Amenabar, instead, preferring to focus on Angela’s reaction to what she is seeing. Angela insists that she is only interested in violent movies from a purely academic standpoint and that she considers what she is seeing to be disgusting, yet she is every bit as fascinated by it as Chema.

In Tesis, Angela serves as a proxy for the viewer. Anyone who wants to watch a film like this to begin with, must have a certain desire to see violent imagery and in the final scene, Amenabar takes his audience to task for having such a desire. Nevertheless, if horror is your thing, then you could do a lot worse than watching Tesis, an American-style horror film that outdoes the films that inspired it.

Verdict: Released three years prior to the similarly themed 8mm, this ground-breaking Spanish horror-thriller simultaneously borrows from Hollywood and shows the Americans how it’s done.

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Stars: Ana Torrent, Fele Martinez, Eduado Noriega.
Language: Spanish

While researching her Honours thesis on audio-visual violence, overachiever Angela (Ana Torrent) enlists the help of Chema (Fele Martinez), a freakish loner who collects ultra-violent movies. But when the pair stumble across a video that appears to show the brutal murder of a fellow student, they soon find themselves the targets of an on-campus snuff ring.

Before achieving international fame with The Others, writer/director Alejandro Amenabar launched his career with Tesis, an American-style horror-thriller that earned seven Goya awards (the Spanish equivalent of the Oscars), including Best Film and Best Original Screenplay, in his home country of Spain. Pretty impressive for a first-time film maker, especially considering the prejudice normally shown towards the horror genre.

Tesis is a well-written, well-acted movie that works on a number of different levels. If all you’re after is a straight-up horror-thriller, then Tesis delivers that. Amenabar himself admits to borrowing many of the techniques used throughout the film from Hollywood. Furthermore, Tesis is one hell of a mystery. Amenabar places Angela at the apex of a love triangle, with Chema and good-looking but dangerous Bosco (Eduardo Noriega), then spends the rest of the film shifting the audience’s suspicions as to the identity of the killer between the two (or is it someone completely different?). However, through the character of Angela, Amenabar also explores the simultaneous attraction and repulsion the viewing public has towards violent images.

In spite of its subject matter, Tesis is not a gore film. At a number of points throughout the film, it appears that Amenabar is about to show the audience some particularly grisly sight, only for the camera to pull away just at the last moment; Amenabar, instead, preferring to focus on Angela’s reaction to what she is seeing. Angela insists that she is only interested in violent movies from a purely academic standpoint and that she considers what she is seeing to be disgusting, yet she is every bit as fascinated by it as Chema.

In Tesis, Angela serves as a proxy for the viewer. Anyone who wants to watch a film like this to begin with, must have a certain desire to see violent imagery and in the final scene, Amenabar takes his audience to task for having such a desire. Nevertheless, if horror is your thing, then you could do a lot worse than watching Tesis, an American-style horror film that outdoes the films that inspired it.

Verdict: Released three years prior to the similarly themed 8mm, this ground-breaking Spanish horror-thriller simultaneously borrows from Hollywood and shows the Americans how it’s done.

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Having banded together to rescue Mickey’s girlfriend Ashley in Shelter, the first Mickey Bolitar novel (a spin-off of Harlan Coben’s adult series about Mickey’s uncle, sports agent turned detective Myron Bolitar, whom Mickey came to live with after his father’s death and mother’s descent into addiction), Mickey and his friends goth girl Ema and nerdy Spoon are faced with a new mystery when their friend Rachel is shot in the head and her mother murdered. Meanwhile, Mickey is still reeling from news he received suggesting his father’s death might not have been the accident it at first appeared to be.

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Charley Brewster is convinced that his new neighbour, Jerry Dandrige, is a vampire, but when even his friends won’t believe him, he is forced to turn to Peter Vincent, a has-been horror star, for help.

Rewind – Fright Night (1985)

Stars: William Ragsdale, Chris Sarandon, Roddy McDowall

Although it was never anywhere near as successful as some of the other horror films released at around the same time (such as A Nightmare on Elm Street or Child’s Play, the latter of which was also written by Fright Night writer/director Tom Holland), there has always been a soft spot in the hearts of many horror fans for Fright Night. Starting life as a modern up-date of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, with vampires and elements of Rear Window thrown in for good measure, this horror-comedy has established itself as a modern horror classic in the 28 years since its release, and has given rise to a sequel, numerous rip-offs ranging from Never Cry Werewolf to Disturbia, and of course, the inevitable remake.

Even though I love the original Fright Night, I have to admit that the whole film is based on an unbelievable premise. I’m not talking about the idea that vampires exist – I can suspend disbelief for long enough to accept that – I’m talking about the idea that a 17 year old boy would, firstly, leap so quickly to the conclusion that his neighbour is a vampire, and secondly, actually believe that an actor is a genuine vampire hunter just because he says so on TV. It would work if Charley were younger, say 12, or uneducated, like the villagers in Three Amigos, but a seemingly normal 17 year old? No way! I also have to admit that, by modern standards, Fright Night now feels a bit slow moving and Charley’s girlfriend Amy comes across as more than a little pathetic. The film could have benefitted from losing around 15 minutes from its running time – preferably the clichéd subplot about Dandrige falling in love with Amy because she looks exactly like his long lost love. Yet, if you can get past these drawbacks and improbabilities, Fright Night has a lot going for it, mostly in the form of its cast and characters.

The best thing about Fright Night is, without a doubt, Roddy McDowall. As Peter Vincent (a character presumably inspired by horror greats Peter Cushing and Vincent Price) McDowall steals the show. He’s as arrogant and over the top as ever, and his transformation from unemployed loser to genuine hero is what makes this film worth watching. At the same time, though, Stephen Geoffreys does an excellent job as Charley’s best friend, the seemingly insane or stoned Evil Ed (a surprisingly complex character who I would have loved to have seen more of) and Chris Sarandon portrays Dandrige using the right mix of seductiveness and menace, just as you’d expect a modern-day Dracula to be. The special effects aren’t bad, given their age, and the overall innocent feel of the film (mostly due to William Ragsdale’s boy-next-door portrayal of Charley) provides a nice break from the cynical teen films of today.

Remake – Fright Night (2011)

Stars: Anton Yelchin, Colin Farrell, David Tennant, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Toni Collette

Given Hollywood’s seeming lack of new ideas in the horror genre, a remake of Fright Night was inevitable and the only surprise is that it wasn’t made sooner. Written by Marti Noxon, who has previously worked on Buffy, Angel and the under-appreciated Point Pleasant, the Fright Night remake transplants the action from the suburbs to Las Vegas, turns Peter Vincent into a Criss Angel-esque stage magician and amps up the action, fixing many of the plot flaws that plagued the original in the process.

In this version, it is Charley’s former best friend, comic book geek Evil Ed, who first becomes convinced that Jerry Dandrige is a vampire and that Peter Vincent can help stop him, and Charley only comes to believe after Evil goes missing; Peter Vincent has a smaller role in the story than in the original, which in a way, is disappointing, but at the same time focusses the action more closely on Charley; and the ridiculous sub-plot about Dandrige and Amy (who is far more in control than her 1985 counterpart) is, thankfully, nowhere to be seen. As I mentioned previously, though, plot was never greatest strength of the original.

The strength of the original lay in its casting, and that’s where Fright Night 1985 really outshines its remake. Don’t get me wrong, all of the actors in the remake do justice to their roles and David Tennant (whom I never liked as Dr Who) won me over with his over-the-top, warts and all portrayal of Vincent… but he’s not Roddy McDowall and Colin Farrell lacks the magnetism of Chris Sarandon. Even William Ragsdale did a better job as Charley Brewster, giving him an air of boy-next-door wholesomeness that Yelchin lacks. Surprisingly, the original also surpasses the remake in terms of special effects. Sure, the exploding vampires in the remake are awesome (especially the first time you see one), but the vampires themselves looked more realistic in the 1985 version, where make-up effects were used, than in the CGI-laden 2011 version. Nevertheless, without the original to compare the Fright Night remake against, I would have no problems with the actors or the effects in this film, so I don’t consider these factors to be a deal breaker.

The Winner

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After being trapped on an island in the middle of a hurricane, travel writer Lea Sutter discovers and adopts orphaned 12 year old twins Daniel and Samuel. But Lea’s husband Mark has his doubts about adopting the twins. Doubts that are soon justified when, shortly after Lea and the twins return to their Long Island home, Mark finds himself under suspicion for a brutal murder that occurred in his own front yard.

Back in the 1990’s, R.L. Stine was to teen fiction what J.K. Rowling became in the 2000’s. Every month, without fail, he produced a new Fear Street book for teens and a Goosebumps book for younger readers, and man, did those books sell. For three consecutive years in the ‘90’s, he was America’s best-selling author, and in 2003, the Guiness Book of World Records named him the best-selling children’s book series author of all time. Then, around the time Harry Potter became the “next best thing”, R.L. Stine seemed to vanish.

In the early 2000’s, YA fiction changed. The quality improved, it became respectable and all the monthly teen paperback series that were popular in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s died out. I had always assumed that Goosebumps and Fear Street had gone the way of The Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley High and that Stine had retired to do whatever he pleased. However, it turns out that, not only is Stine still writing around six Goosebumps books per year, he also has his own TV series (The Haunting Hour) and has recently come out with a new book for adults.

Red Rain is Stine’s fourth book for adults, but the first I would class as a true adult novel. Stine is clearly most comfortable writing for and about kids and teens. His previous three attempts at breaking into the adult market (Superstitious, Eye Candy, and The Sitter) all had protagonists in their early 20’s who acted like over-grown teenagers, so for all intents and purposes, were effectively YA books, just with more swearing, sex and violence that you’d usually find in one of Stine’s books. In Red Rain, however, Lea and Mark Sutter are a married couple in their 30’s, with kids and jobs, who said goodbye to their own childhoods years ago. Of course, Stine, being who he is, had to find some way of getting kids into the mix, which he does by way of 12 year old twins Daniel and Samuel, who turn out to be more than the Sutters bargained for, in the full horror story sense of the phrase (Side note: Why is it that adopted kids are always evil in horror stories? Did all these horror writers hate Annie and Anne of Green Gables that much?). The scenes featuring the twins are where the story really comes to life. Nevertheless, the book never feels like it is actually aimed at 12 year olds.

Red Rain is not great literature, by any stretch of the imagination, but it is very entertaining. The writing is bad in parts (“He doesn’t want us to be happy. Pa doesn’t want to give us the things we want. You heard him. You heard every word. We have work to do. We have plans, boyo. We cannot let the new pa stand in our way.”) and some of the twists and turns are ridiculous to say the least, but if you enjoyed reading Stine’s Fear Street books, you’ll love it. That’s essentially what this book is – Fear Street for adults.

The Fear Street books weren’t great books either, but Stine’s formula of cliff-hangers at the end of each chapter and humour mixed with a genuine sense of danger, kept readers turning the pages and buying his books. No matter how much I laughed at the lameness of Red Rain (for example, who really adopts kids without so much as checking to see that their parents are really dead?), I kept reading, I had a lot of fun, and I was even surprised by a few plot twists that I didn’t see coming. By that definition, as far as I’m concerned, Red Rain was a good book.

Even though R.L. Stine was once called “the Stephen King of children’s literature”, his writing will never be mistaken for King’s, but it serves a purpose. I loved the Fear Street books and missed them sorely when the series ended. Red Rain provides one more opportunity for fans to journey down Fear Street and for that I am grateful.

Verdict: A laughably bad, good time that Fear Street fans will welcome.

Were you a fan of R.L. Stine? What was your favourite of Stine’s books? Comment below.

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Stars: Vegar Hoel, Stig Frode Henriksen, Charlotte Frogner
Language: Norwegian

 

While on holidays in the mountains, a group of eight medical students are terrorized by an army of Nazi zombies who have been hiding in the area since the end of World War 2.

Well, that’s 90 minutes of my life I’m never getting back. With a fantastic concept that could have been used as the basis for either a highly original zombie thriller or a hilarious black comedy in the vein of Shaun of the Dead, Dead Snow seemed destined to become an international cult hit. Yet, second-time writer/director Tommy Wirkola clearly lacks the experience and talent to do justice to his idea, with the result being an under-developed, amateurish waste of time.

To give Wirkola his dues, though, the beginning of Dead Snow is actually pretty good (hence, me not giving up on it like I should have). The film opens with one of the students being stalked and killed by an unseen monster and Wirkola springboards off this to create tension and suspense – which he then proceeds to throw out the window by boring his audience with scene after scene of his characters behaving like uni students on holidays (about as much fun as being the only sober person at a party full of drunks) interspersed with the odd, very brief zombie attack so that people don’t mistake the film for someone’s vacation footage.

At about the half-way mark, the students finally realize they’re in danger and we get to see a zombie clearly for the first time. This is the point where the film should have picked up, but instead, it completely loses focus and spins hopelessly out of control. None of the characters were adequately developed as individuals in the first half of the film, so it’s impossible to care whether they live or die; once they start being attacked, the characters all but stop talking to each other (and the zombies can’t speak), so things keep happening with little or no explanation; and anything that was previously set up is completely forgotten. For example, we are told several times that one of the med students is afraid of blood, but then, suddenly and with no transition scene, he’s hacking at zombies with a chainsaw. By the time the disappointing ending rolled around, I was only still watching because I’d seen so much of the film, I figured I might as well keep going to the end, but I was happy to be through with this completely pointless waste of time.

Nevertheless, clearly not everyone shares my opinion of Dead Snow. The quote on the DVD case (and we all know how reliable cover quotes are) says “zombies, Nazis, blood on snow… it doesn’t get any better.” I wonder if we saw the same movie? The cover also describes this as a black comedy. Unless your idea of humour is seeing people’s intestines (which Wirkola seems to find hilarious), it’s not. And of course, someone in Hollywood must have liked it because, following making this film, Tommy Wirkola was given the opportunity to go to Hollywood and make Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. I haven’t seen Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters yet, but based on Dead Snow, I am rapidly losing interest.

Verdict: There are many great foreign language horror movies out there. Dead Snow isn't one of them. Anything you could do with your time is better than watching this film.

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Last week the Mystery Writers of America presented the Edgar Awards at a banquet at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City. Live by Night by Dennis Lehane took out the Best Novel award, while Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein took out Best Young Adult Novel (a full list of all winners can be found here). My congratulations go out to all of the winners, but as those of you who have been following this blog over the past few months will know, none of the nominees for Best Young Adult Novel really impressed me this year. Code Name Verity wasn’t even a mystery; and of the four remaining nominees, three of them (The Edge of Nowhere, Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone, and Emily’s Dress and Other Missing Things) had very weak mysteries as minor sub-plots; and Crusher, although a true mystery, was nothing special. The Edgar Awards home page claims that the Edgars are “widely acknowledged to be the most prestigious awards in the (mystery) genre”, but by giving the award to a book that isn’t a mystery novel, the Mystery Writers of America are devaluing their own brand. As I said before, in a previous post, if a non-mystery can win an Edgar, what is the point of having this award at all?

The really disappointing part about all of this is that, had they wanted to, the Edgar judges could have filled the YA novel shortlist with great mysteries. There were some fantastic YA mystery novels released in 2012 that didn’t get nominated at all, including: Slide by Jill Hathaway and I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga. I highly recommend them both to readers and Edgar judges alike (reviews to follow in future blog posts). I Hunt Killers was nominated for the 2013 Horror Writers Association Bram Stoker Award for Best Young Adult Novel, so I’m hoping it wins there. The Stoker Award Winners are to be announced on 15th June 2013.

I wish I knew what went wrong with the Edgars this year, because in the past the Edgar Nominees list has actually proved to be a pretty reliable source of good mystery fiction. This was the reason why I decided to read all of this year’s nominees. Here are four past YA Edgar nominees and winners that prove that the judges’ decisions aren’t always misguided:

Shelter by Harlan Coben (2012 Nominee)

Coben is best known for his series of adult novels about sports agent turned detective Myron Bolitar, but in Shelter, Coben turns his attention to Bolitar’s 16 year old nephew, Mickey, who has come to live with his uncle following the death of his father and is equally talented when it comes to solving mysteries; in this case, the disappearance of Mickey’s girlfriend. Coben’s highly enjoyable and often hilarious style translates well to YA fiction, and an overarching plot centring on a secret organisation that may have been involved in the death of Mickey’s father is likely to keep this series going for several more books to come.

Reality Check by Peter Abrahams (2010 Winner)

Cody’s life is going well. He’s the quarterback on the school football team and dating Clea, the smartest girl in school in his small town of Little Bend, Colorado. All that changes, however, when Clea’s father sends her away to boarding school in Vermont; the couple break up; and Cody has a career-ending football injury. Then, one day, Cody learns that Clea has gone missing from her new school. Determined to find her, he travels across country to join in the search, and in the process, uncovers a number of secrets the townsfolk would rather remain hidden. This is a solid and suspenseful mystery that benefits from well-developed characters courtesy of an extended set-up before Clea’s disappearance.

The Morgue and Me by John C. Ford (2010 Nominee)

To earn some money before going off to college, high school graduate Christopher gets a job as a janitor in the local morgue. But when a body shows up listed as a suicide that even Christopher can tell was murdered, and the town sheriff is the prime suspect, Christopher teams up with Tina, an ambitious young newspaper reporter, to get to the bottom of the apparent conspiracy. John C. Ford’s debut novel is full of twists and turns and a strong sense of humour. The highlight for me was Christopher’s younger brother, Daniel, a primary school aged genius who may one day take over the world.

Down the Rabbit Hole by Peter Abrahams (2006 Nominee)

When Cracked-Up Katie, an eccentric local woman in Echo Falls is found murdered, 13 year old Ingrid Levin-Hill decides to follow in the footsteps of her hero, Sherlock Holmes, and investigate. Ingrid is everything you wish you were as a child, but probably weren’t: a smart, soccer-playing, aspiring actress with detective skills to rival Nancy Drew. Like any kid, she makes mistakes, but her flaws make her human – and drive the story. She is essentially an older version of Ruby, the nine year-old detective of Abrahams’s earlier adult novel, The Tutor, and it’s easy to see why Abrahams decided to use her as the star of his first foray into YA fiction. In spite of Ingrid’s young age, Abrahams never talks down to his audience, so this book will appeal to readers of all ages, not just 13 year olds.

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On Friday I posted my review of Agent Colt Shore: Domino 29, the debut novel from Axel Avian, which will be published on 15th May 2013. Today, I have the pleasure of presenting a Q&A session with Axel. If you want to know more about Axel and Domino 29, you can check out his website www.axelavian.com or hear him answer questions on his YouTube series Regular Guy Spy.

Q: Human trafficking is a pretty serious topic for a novel aimed at a younger audience. Why did you choose that as the subject of Domino 29?

A: The reason is twofold. The first is to up the stakes for a young audience. It’s a sad fact that many of the victims of human trafficking are children themselves. I want my readers to empathize with the girls in the book so that they personally appreciate the danger. The second reason is to introduce my readers to the reality that human trafficking does exist, but to counter that with optimism that people are fighting against it and all is not, nor will it ever be, lost.

Q: In Domino 29, Colt Shore travels from a small town in the US to Afghanistan and then on to Germany, where he battles the novel's villains at two major tourist attractions. Have you actually visited all of the places you wrote about and if not, how did you manage to write about them in such vivid detail?

A: I have not been to all of the places, but I have been to many of them. Skateistan, for instance, I have never visited—but I’d love to! However, as you mentioned, many of the locations in Domino 29 are very famous landmarks, and they all have websites. If you go to the website for Neuschwanstein Castle, you’ll find not only photos of the interiors, but full floorplans, as well. And, believe it or not, when I typed in “elevator shaft,” the first image that came up was the one at Kehlsteinhaus! Now you have to search a little harder, but it’s there. When all else fails, I fall back on my imagination to make an educated guess.

Q: According to your website, you once worked as an active agent for an organization much like FALCON. Why did you decide to give it up and write books instead?

A: Who told you I gave it up?

Q: Why write for teenagers and not adults? Do you think you will ever write for adults in the future?

A: I love writing for teenagers. I think very often kids are not given the respect they deserve. In fact, I think that YA often demands more of an author, because kids won’t put up with you droning on about something. Get to the point, make it fun and interesting, always bring your A Game. Standards are very high. I’m guessing that’s why lots of adults enjoy YA series these days.

Q: What advice would you give to aspiring writers (especially aspiring YA writers)?

A: Stop being an aspiring writer and become a writer. The only way to do that is to write. Never judge your first draft, just get it down. All of it. Don’t keep re-writing the first chapter. Tell a story about characters that engage you. It’s the only way to engage other people.

Q: What's next for you and Colt Shore?

A: The next adventure is Agent Colt Shore: The Games Begin, which will be published in Spring 2014. We pick up where we left off after Domino 29, leaving Colt scarcely a moment to breathe. For my part I need to take my own advice and get writing. I do have one or two other projects that I’m working on as well so I’ll definitely be keeping busy over the summer.

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When Colt Shore discovers the ordinary couple who raised him are not his parents and that he is, in fact, the son of two top secret agents, it starts a domino chain reaction that leads to him becoming an active FALCON (Free Alliance for the Lasting Cooperation of Nations) agent himself and teaming up with rock star Talya Ellis to rescue a group of Afghan teenagers from a human trafficking ring.

Just as it’s inevitable that every spy novel written from now until forever will be compared to the James Bond series, it’s also inevitable that every YA spy novel will be compared to Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider series. The beginning of Domino 29 reads like an Alex Rider/Harry Potter hybrid. You know, ordinary teenager who has spent his formative years being trained in useful spy skills (in this case, by his school, a sort of Hogwarts for spies) is catapulted into active service after discovering his parents were really spies, too. But stick with it, because after the initial set-up (and let’s face it, there aren’t that many ways to explain how a fifteen year old could possibly become a spy, so a bit of overlap with other teen spy novels here is unavoidable) Domino 29 really comes into its own.

Whereas the Alex Rider books existed in a stylised, James Bond-inspired reality of awesome gadgets, improbable situations and over-the-top villains with far-fetched plans for world domination (see, I told you it was inevitable that all spy novels get compared to the James Bond books), Domino 29 exists in a reality more akin to our own. For his first assignment, Colt is sent to Afghanistan to protect Thorne and Talya Ellis, the rock star children of journalist Sophie Ellis, from a potential kidnapping attempt while on a USO tour of the country. In response to articles she has written about Afghanistan, Sophie has recently been subject to threats against herself and her children. It sounds like a straight-forward mission, until Colt discovers that not only doesn’t Talya want to be protected (especially not by someone younger than herself), but she wants Colt to help her to rescue a young Afghan girl from a human trafficking ring. While it’s impossible for anyone to believe that any of the Alex Rider villains existed outside of the series’ universe, it’s an unfortunate fact that villains like those in Domino 29 really do exist, giving the book an overall feeling of realism throughout.

That’s not to say that this book is dreary or depressing, however. Far from it. Even though Domino 29 deals with some very serious topics, it still features all the fun and excitement you would expect from a YA spy novel: car chases, fights, extreme sports being used to get the hero into and out of difficult situations. The highlight of the book is two show-downs – one at Kehlsteinhaus (Eagle’s Nest), Hitler’s mountain retreat, and the other at Neuschwanstein Castle, the castle which inspired Disneyland’s Sleeping Beauty’s Castle – which make such good use to these locations that it wouldn’t surprise me if many readers added them to their lists of places to one day visit.

When Anthony Horowitz brought the Alex Rider series to an end back in 2011, a vacancy opened in the teen spy novel market which, until now, has yet to be adequately filled. For Alex Rider fans searching for something to fill that gap, or for those simply looking for a YA adventure novel with a bit more depth than usual, Domino 29 might just be the answer.

Verdict: Alex Rider meets Taken in this exciting new series from newcomer Axel Avian.

Agent Colt Shore: Domino 29 will be released on 15th May 2013.

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Being a BBC series, The Fades one and only season contains just six episodes, but that season gets through a lot of material. Although the ending of the final episode provides a lead in to a second season that will never be made, it does tie off the majority of the Season One plot threads so that the audience is left with a feeling of closure. If you ignore the final minute or two of the last episode, it could even be viewed as a stand-alone mini-series.

Inspired by the disappointing fate of The Fades, here are five more series that were axed way too soon:

Point Pleasant (2005 – 2006)

Stars: Elisabeth Harnois, Grant Show, Sam Page, Aubrey Dollar, Dina Meyer.

Episodes: 13 (5 unaired)

What’s it About?: After washing up, unconscious, on the beach of the coastal town of Point Pleasant, Christina Nickson (Elisabeth Harnois) is taken in by the local doctor and his family. However, mysterious events around her soon lead her to the conclusion that she is really the daughter of Satan and that she has been brought to Point Pleasant for the final showdown between good and evil.

Why it Shouldn’t Have Been Axed?: Just as much soap opera as supernatural thriller, Point Pleasant was worth watching just to see gone-to-seed former Melrose Place star Grant Show chew the scenery as Lucas Boyd, a demon sent by Christina’s father to “look after her” and to stir things up. The idea of a demon trying to cause marriage breakups and the like may sound mundane, but his end game of trying to turn Christina over to the dark side was anything but.

Wolf Lake (2001 – 2002)

Stars: Lou Diamond Phillips, Tim Matheson, Paul Wesley, Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

Episodes: 10 (5 initially unaired)

What’s it About?: Seattle police detective John Kanin (Lou Diamond Phillips) tracks his missing girlfriend to Wolf Lake, a small town in the Pacific Northwest that is home to a clan of werewolves. Convinced that there is something off about the town, he stays on and takes a job as a deputy-sheriff.

Why it Shouldn’t Have Been Axed?: It took a few episodes for Wolf Lake to find its feet. Was it a drama about warring werewolf clans with strong Native American undertones? A Twin Peaks inspired small town dramedy? Eventually, the writers decided it was, in fact, a police procedural with the detective in question, John Kanin, being the only person in town not in on the secret that all of his suspects were werewolves, and the show really started to hit its stride. Unfortunately, that was also the point when CBS decided to pull the plug. The best episodes in the series are the last few that were never aired.

 

Veronica Mars (2004 – 2007)

Stars: Kristen Bell, Enrico Colantoni, Percy Daggs III, Teddy Dunn, Jason Dohring.

Episodes: 64

What’s it About?: A modern update of Nancy Drew by way of Philip Marlowe. High school outcast and private investigator’s daughter Veronica Mars solves her classmates’ mysteries by day and helps her father with his work by night. Buffy creator Joss Whedon once described it as the “Best. Show. Ever.”

Why it Shouldn’t Have Been Axed? : Although by the end of the third season, in which Veronica moved from high school to college (the point at which most teen shows falter), the show was getting a bit weak, prior to the show being cancelled, creator Rob Thomas pitched the fourth season as Veronica Mars: FBI. Set four years after the end of Season Three, it was to cover Veronica’s first year as a Special Agent with the FBI. Thomas made a trailer for the series, which can be found as an extra on the Season Three DVD release, and it looked great. Think an FBI version of 21 Jump Street. Considering the recent news of an upcoming Veronica Mars movie, clearly I'm not the only one who thinks that Veronica Mars still had something to say.

Hex (2004 - 2005)

Stars: Christina Cole, Jemima Rooper, Michael Fassbender, Laura Pyper.

Episodes: 19

What’s it About?: Marketed as ‘the British Buffy’, the first (six episode) season was about Cassie (Christina Cole), a 17 year old girl who discovers tha,t not only does she have supernatural powers, but Azazeal (Michael Fassbender before he hit the big time), the leader of a group of fallen angels known as the Nephelium, wants to impregnate her with the anti-Christ in order to release his fellow Nephelium into the world. In the (thirteen episode) second season, Christina Cole left the series, so Cassie was replaced by Ella Dee (Laura Pyper), a 400 year old teenager with a personal vendetta against the Nephelium, trying to cope with her competing desires to find love and stop Azazeal.

Why it Shouldn’t Have Been Axed?: Hex was all about teenagers making the wrong decisions, with apocalyptic consequences. Darker and more cynical than many of its American counterparts, it featured some great characters, including Leon, the class asshole who becomes a hero; Thelma, the self-absorbed ghost; and Roxanne, the class bitch who sets herself a goal of seducing a priest.

 

Demons (2009)

Stars: Philip Glenister, Zoe Tapper, Christian Cooke, Holliday Grainger.

Episodes: 6

What’s it About?: Although Hex was marketed as the British Buffy, Demons really was British Buffy. Luke is the last descendent of Abraham Van Helsing and his destiny is to hunt and destroy demons, a task which he is trained for by his dead father’s best friend, Rupert Galvin (Philip Glenister – think Rupert Giles with an American accent), and Mina Harker (yes, that Mina Harker), a centuries-old vampire.

Why it Shouldn’t Have Been Axed?: OK, Demons probably did deserve to get cancelled. The monsters looked fake; Philip Glenister’s American accent was appalling; and none of the demons stayed alive long enough to develop any depth. However, the show was so bad that I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. Where else would you find lines like: “first we type them, then smite them”?

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This is the last in a series of five posts reviewing the nominees for the 2013 Best Young Adult Novel Edgar Allan Poe Award, the winner of which will be announced on 2nd May 2013.

When Claire Salter moves to Amherst, Massachusetts, one-time home of poet Emily Dickinson, she takes to breaking into Emily Dickinson’s house at night as a way of coping with her many issues; like the fact that her mother committed suicide, and twelve months ago, her best friend, Richy, went missing. When, one night, she “accidentally” steals Emily Dickinson’s dress, Claire forms an unlikely alliance with her student-teacher, Mr Tate, to figure out what to do with it, which ultimately leads to the pair banding together to solve the mystery of Richy’s disappearance.

Between the theft of Emily Dickinson’s dress; Claire’s mother’s suicide; Richy’s disappearance; and Claire’s relationship with Tate, there is a lot going on in Emily’s Dress and Other Missing Things and with the right author, this could have been a really good book. Unfortunately, Kathryn Burak is not that author. In spite of the fact that she is a university level writing teacher, this is only Burak’s first novel (she had previously published short stories and poetry), and she clearly lacks the skill and experience necessary to handle this many complex plot threads, any of which would have been enough to sustain a whole book in its own right.

In an ideal situation, all of the sub-plots mentioned above would have been interwoven throughout the whole novel, creating a tapestry of plot threads where no one sub-plot is ever allowed to drift to the back of the reader’s mind for long. However, as Burak seems incapable of managing more than one sub-plot at a time, what the reader gets instead is an episodic novel that focusses almost solely on one idea before moving on to the next. The first part of the book is all about Emily Dickinson and the dress (with so much detail on Dickinson’s life and poetry that, at times, I felt like I was back in high school English class), but once Claire has stolen the dress, Emily Dickinson is virtually forgotten, and the book becomes all about Claire dealing with her various issues including Richy’s disappearance, which is later declared a murder after his body is discovered. Then, in the final 80 pages of this 232 page novel, Claire and Tate finally get down to solving the murder.

Speaking of Richy’s murder, don’t expect to be able to guess the killer’s identity, because it’s just not possible. Until Richy’s killer is introduced, no other suspects are presented and the killer is only introduced when Claire identifies him as such. No reason is ever given for why he killed Richy, and Claire and Tate are able to prove his guilt far too easily due to the fact that he has conveniently kept several of Richy’s belongings lying around for over a year after the murder. If I had come up with a mystery sub-plot that lame, it would have never made it beyond the outlining stage, but clearly Burak and the Edgar judging panel don’t have such qualms.

In a year of mediocre nominees for the Best Young Adult Mystery Edgar Award, it comes as no surprise that Emily’s Dress and Other Missing Things is a disappointment. However, given some of the other great YA novels that were published in 2012 and missed out on a nomination, I had hoped for much more.

Verdict: The idea of combining a murder mystery with the theft of Emily Dickinson’s dress is a fantastic one. Too bad that Burak lacks the skill to do this story justice.

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Stars: Josh Hutcherson, Dane Cook, Shanley Caswell, Spencer Locke

The students of Grizzly Lake High School are being killed off one by one by Cinderhella, the villain of a popular horror movie franchise, and too smart for her own good Riley Jones (Shanley Caswell) appears to be her next target. Too bad everyone thinks Riley is an attention-seeking loser and that no one will believe her. However, when Riley and several other students are given detention on prom night, Cinderhella shows up too, and the group must band together to figure out the identity of Cinderhella, in order to save themselves – and the whole world.

Imagine Scott Pilgrim vs the World crossed with Scream and a handful of other, randomly selected movies, as written by someone obsessed with the 1990’s (the ‘90’s are the new ‘80’s, don’t you know) and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what Detention is all about. An independent film that was later picked up for distribution by Sony, Detention lacks the polish of its studio-financed counterparts, and with the exception of Josh Hutcherson (pre-The Hunger Games) and Dane Cook, stars a lot of actors you’ve probably never heard of. However, what this film lacks in quality, it more than makes up for in enthusiasm, and the end product has cult hit written all over it.

At first glance, Detention comes across as a fairly straight-forward teen slasher-comedy that’s been jazzed up with a few post-modern touches, such as Scott Pilgrim-esque captions and characters who talk to the audience. Riley is the stereotypical smart, sarcastic loser girl character that seems to be popping up in every teen comedy these days (see also Easy A and Awkward), and Cinderhella, although a passable horror villain, isn’t exactly likely to spawn her own horror franchise like Freddy or Jason.

Then, around the 30 – 40 minute mark, weird stuff starts happening. Really weird stuff. Bizarre sub-plots and characters arrive completely out of nowhere, such as a time-travelling alien bear, an acid-spewing footballer, and a previously unseen character announcing that the world is going to end in 9 ½ minutes. Half the fun of the film is trying to figure out what these are all references to. By the final half-hour, the twists and turns are coming so thick and fast that you’ll probably miss half of the references, but you’ll definitely never guess what’s going to happen next.

Detention is the sort of film that could easily have degenerated into a third-rate parody (think Dance Movie, Date Movie, Superhero Movie – basically anything with Movie in the title). Yet, instead, writer/director Joseph Kahn delivers a movie which only gets better with repeat viewing. The less you know about it going in, the better. Just enjoy going where this film takes you and have faith that it will all make sense in the end.

Verdict: An intelligent parody masquerading as a dumb teen comedy; Detention is so full of pop-culture references that multiple viewings are necessary to fully enjoy it.

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This is the fourth in a series of five posts reviewing the nominees for the 2013 Best Young Adult Novel Edgar Allan Poe Award, the winner of which will be announced on 2nd May 2013.

Class salutatorian Becca Williams has spent the past five years of her life dreaming up ways of escaping the small New England town of Bridgeton for good. But when, on the night of her high school graduation, Becca’s boyfriend dumps her and then the battered and beaten dead body of recent college graduate Amelia Anne Richardson is found on the side of the road, Becca’s life is sent into a spin. Through a narrative that switches back and forth between Becca’s summer in Bridgeton and the final days of Amelia’s life, we come to realise that Becca’s life isn’t all that far removed from that of the dead girl.

My faith in the Edgar Award judging panel is vanishing bit by bit, as I work my way through the Best Young Adult Novel Edgar short list. Two weeks ago, I argued that Code Name Verity should never have been nominated for this award since, by no stretch of the imagination, is it a mystery. With that in mind, I was very pleased to find a dead body – that of the title character - on page one of Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone. Nevertheless, even though Amelia’s murderer is finally revealed at the end of the novel, solving her murder is not what this book is all about.

Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone is really about two girls at crossroads in their lives who are trying to decide who they really are and what they want to do next. Becca is seen by those around her as going places, but she is scared to leave the safety of her small town and of her relationship with James, her high school drop-out boyfriend. Amelia, on the other hand, is seen by her boyfriend, Luke, as another accessory for his future life as a yuppie businessman, but dreams of following her heart to a career as an actress. Each of the two girls must decide which path she is going to take in her life and whether or not she will leave her boyfriend in order to pursue that path. It’s a coming-of-age story, or more accurately, two coming-of-age stories that run in parallel, and the mystery of Amelia’s murder is merely an afterthought to these stories. Becca does not take on the role of detective, like you would expect in a conventional mystery, and despite the fact that she does ultimately uncover the truth about Amelia’s death, it is by passively stumbling on a vital piece of evidence rather through actively searching for clues.

Kat Rosenfield’s writing style is truly beautiful, reminiscent of that of Jeffrey Eugenides in The Virgin Suicides or Donna Tartt in The Little Friend. Her prose is flowery and mysterious, and I would be quite happy to read just about anything she writes for the rest of her career, even if it is just her shopping list. It is for this reason, I assume, she was nominated for the Edgar award in the first place. Nevertheless, her characters still need a bit of work. Amelia and Becca are not just similar characters, they are the same character, just as James and Luke are identical. I understand that Rosenfield wanted to show the parallels between their stories, but she goes too far, making her characters virtually indistinguishable in places to the point where I had to double check who I was reading about. In addition, Rosenfield spends so much time focussing on her female protagonists and sympathising with their plight that pretty much every male character comes across as a complete jerk. By the end of the book, I felt sorry for any males who happened to be reading the book (presumably very few, since this novel is aimed squarely at girls) because the men came out of it looking so bad.

Still, this is only Rosenfield’s first novel, and if you’re not male and coming-of-age fiction is your thing, it’s worth checking out. Rosenfield’s not quite up to the standard of Eugenides or Tartt yet (ever though her writing style resembles theirs), and I wouldn’t class her as a true mystery writer. However, as a writer of general teen fiction, Kat Rosenfield is definitely one to watch.

Verdict: A mysterious novel, but not a mystery. Yet, Kat Rosenfield’s gorgeous prose mean that Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone stands a good chance at winning at this year’s Edgar awards.

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