Old School Bones
By Randall Peffer
Bleak House Books, $24.95
ISBN: 978-1-932557-86-2

Michael DeCastro was formerly a defense attorney who now fills his time working on his father’s fishing boat. But the entreaties of Awashonka "Awasha" Patterson, faculty adviser and Director of Minority Affairs at a New England prep school (once a boys’ and a girls’ school now integrated into one coed school, albeit still filled with sexist and racial prejudices) convince him to investigate the death of Liberty Baker, a young black student. The authorities have ruled it a suicide but Awasha and Liberty’s dorm-mates think she was murdered — she had been the recipient of a racially charged death threat.

The girls had been investigating the existence of secret societies at the school that were banned 50 years ago — but whether or not they actually ceased to exist is another question. Now, with Liberty dead, the other girls feel threatened as well. And when the remains of, apparently, another student are discovered, that threat seems more real.

Old school ties are surely more benign than old school bones, but not necessarily.

There are various ethnicities which come into play — African-American, Native American, Portugese, Asian. Michael is a man haunted by his last case, to which frequent references are made (a bit more than necessary, to this reader, the point having been made and made again). Awasha asks for his "counsel," saying, "You know the legal system, how the police work, how to get their attention. You know what questions to ask to help us find Liberty’s killer." And this time he wants to see justice done.

The writing, at times poetic, is at other times unconvincing and clunky. As well, there are flashbacks by way of italicized passages, their references for quite a while obscure, and frequently as each chapter starts the characters involved in the action are not identified, initially making for more confusion. Despite these reservations, I found myself pulled into the book, which ultimately was a fast and interesting read, with unusual characters and a plot unlike any other I’ve read recently — surely not a bad thing.

Review by GLORIA FEIT

©2008 Lorie Ham. All rights reserved.