In Too Deep. (A Shelby Belgarden Mystery). Valerie Sherrard. Toronto, ON: Boardwalk/Dundurn Press, 2003. 222 pp., pbk., $12.99. ISBN 1-55002-443-4. Grades 9 and up / Ages 14 and up. Review by Joanne Peters. **** /4

excerpt:

The first time I ever saw Amber Chapman she was pulling a long, red wagon that held a bulging plastic garbage bag. I knew right away she wasn't from Little River because she had on this weird outfit that made her look as though she bought her clothes in a second hand store for the insane. Her jacket was badly worn green leather with a big yellow sunflower centered on the back of it and her pants billowed out huge purple puffs that made it look like a long skirt at first glance. It was the strangest combination I'd ever seen.

And it's not just clothing that makes Amber stand out, either the girl has attitude. Although Shelby Belgarden tries to be friendly, she's rebuffed, although it's Shelby's mom who offers a different perspective: "Sounds like she isn't a very happy person." (p. 13) Well into the novel, readers find out why Amber is unhappy: she's moved to live with the Brodericks, an elderly couple who own a gas station on the outskirts of Little River. What's prompted the move? Pete, her mother's new boyfriend, whose need to control everything and everyone has turned their home into "Pete's prison," resulting in an edict to Amber that it's "My way or the highway." (p. 92-93) So, Amber takes the highway, and it leads her to Little River.

     Like many small towns, Little River has more than its share of intolerance for those new and different. Before long, Amber is unfairly suspected of being responsible for a series of thefts happening in Little River High. At first, Shelby, who has a reputation as an amateur sleuth, is ready to believe circumstantial evidence implicating Amber. Furthermore, Shelby's jealousy of a possible relationship between Amber and Greg Taylor, an all round decent guy who right now is just a friend, but could definitely morph into boy friend at any moment, fans the flames (not that I'm stretching the allusion to Sherrard's previous “Shelby Belgarden Mystery,” Out of the Ashes). But then, Greg asks her out, and he helps Shelby to see that her suspicion of Amber is both unwarranted, and more importantly, unfair. The sad story of Amber's difficult decision to leave home helps Shelby to make an important decision of her own: "Now the most important thing I could do was to help her clear her name." (p. 93) And in the remaining 129 pages of the book, she does.

     I loved this book and read it twice! Shelby is certainly no Canadian knock off of Nancy Drew. This "girl detective" is an authentic teenager, by turns hoping that, finally, Greg will really ask her out, and maybe even kiss her, and then, when it seems as if he's really interested in Amber instead, entertaining fantasies of dying of a broken heart, which will lead to Greg's regret and necessary retreat into an hermetic existence, living "alone in the woods, in a shrine he'd build in [her] honour." (p. 25) The adults in this novel are remarkably decent, although Shelby, like anyone her age, is annoyed by parents who” drive you insane trying to cheer you up" when you're in a fit of adolescent angst, or worse still, embarrass her when, after asking a perfectly rational question about who's responsible for the "smacking sound" resulting from people kissing, go ahead and kiss, right in front of her, and worse still, make it "last a lot longer than necessary." (p. 53) Little River High School is high school anywhere, where not "everyone is totally honest" (p. 24), and, typical of high schools, small or large, contains its share of cliques and gossip mongers (including Shelby's best friend, Betts). Valerie Sherrard's having fostered more than seventy adolescents and her work as director of a group home for teens has certainly sharpened her ear to the subtleties of adolescent life and speech, and anyone who teaches teens or works with them will feel as though Sherrard has been recording daily life in their workplace.

     Having read In Too Deep, I have to read the first Shelby Belgarden mystery, Out of the Ashes, and I am eagerly awaiting the next book in the series. Don't buy just one copy of In Too Deep for your high school fiction collection, buy two! I'm positive that they'll both be circulating faster than hot gossip in a high school!

Highly Recommended.

Joanne Peters is a teacher librarian at Kelvin High School in Winnipeg, MB.

To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.

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Published by The Manitoba Library Association ISSN 1201-9364

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