Kid Alone by Simon Mason, 2017

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Meet Garvie Smith. Good-for-nothing scoundrel, genius, and sometime detective. Right in the middle of exams hell--until now.

A boy from Marsh Academy has been shot, with no clear motive and no clues. Disgraced police detective Raminder Singh is on the case, and he's determined to keep Garvie away.

But Garvie knows he's the only one who has any idea where to look for the answers. Starting with his best friend's girlfriend. And it's going to take more than pointless studying or flunking his tests to stop him getting involved.

Exams. What exams?

(384 pages)

This is the second book in the Garvie Smith murder mystery series. I also received a copy of the first book, Girl Running, when it was first released in the United States; you can read my review here, but the jist of it is that I liked the clever mystery aspect of the story but I didn't appreciate the foul language and came away really disturbed by elements of the murder plotline. That's why I was a bit apprehensive when my copy of Kid Alone arrived.

I needn't have been, though, because it was very different from the first book. There was no sexual assault, for one thing, which made a huge difference. The swear words were a lot less prevalent as well, with one or two f-words (still not ideal), but not nearly as much as in the first book.

The murder mystery itself is still an intriguing one, but not as emotionally impactful as the first one. It was also, frankly, rather more convoluted: there were so many characters and side plots that wound up being important, but I kept getting some of them confused and I didn't really care much about some of the murder's components. The parts I cared most about were the scenes with the victim's grandparents, who were so broken and sad and certain that his death was the result of anti-Polish sentiment.

It was actually also really interesting to learn about this anti-Polish racism that's apparently going on in Britain, since it's definitely not a thing I'd ever heard of before coming here. I have no idea whether the representation was fair or not, since I know absolutely nothing about it in real life, but it added an interesting component to the story. The book's description of autism also seemed well done to me, but I am in no ways an expert on ASD or its representation.

All in all, Kid Alone is an interesting murder mystery. It's not the best one I've ever read (Agatha Christie is hard to beat), but it's an interesting read with an unpredictable mystery story. If you do decide to read it, let us know what you think in the comments section below!

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this novel from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.