Knowing Mel, she and Pip will stumble across a Swedish boys’ school doing massage classes and an extended chocolate-tasting tour of the island. Which leaves me. Alone at the end of the Erath with a smashed-up foot, in virtual solitary confinement. Seriously, it’s a custodial sentence, not a summer break. But after recent events, maybe that’s exactly what Mum and Dad had in mind.
Dan’s summer is one long nightmare. Nursing a broken leg, a constant reminder of the accident which killed three of his mates, he has been dragged off on a family holiday. At the remote settlement his parents have chosen, Dan feels even more out of sorts. His sister and her best friend seem to have plenty to do, and his parents are off exploring, but Dan’s injury, and his grief, haunt him.
When he starts to feel the presence of a mysterious girl in the lighthouse keeper’s cottage where they are staying, Dan wonders if he is hallucinating because of the painkillers he takes. But as he reads the lighthouse logbook he realises that this girl has something to tell him.
Five Parts Dead is an engrossing read which is part mystery, part ghost story and part contemporary issue-based. Dan must deal with the consequences of the accident he has before the novel starts, and with the effect it has had on his whole family, as well as his growing feelings for Pip, his sister’s friend. At the same time the story of Lily, the daughter of one of the original lighthouse keepers, is gradually revealed., through Dan’s reading of the journal, and further investigations.
Five Parts Dead will appeal to both male and female teen readers.
Five Parts Dead, by Tim Pegler
Text, 2010
ISBN 9781921656286
This book can be purchased in good bookstores or online from Fishpond.