[Ryan Dooley 01] • Dooley Takes the Fall

" White Pine nominee, 2009 Spinetingler Magazine Award Nominee, 2009

Canadian Children's Book Centre Our Choice, 2009"

"A boy maybe twelve years old, on a bike, stopped next to Dooley, looked at the kid sprawled on the pavement and said, "Is he dead?"

"Yeah, I think so," Dooley said. In fact, he was sure of it because there was no air going into or coming out of the lungs of the kid on the pavement. Also, the kid's open eyes were staring at nothing, and his head was twisted, as if he had turned to look at something just before he made contact with the hard surface of the path."

Right away, Dooley knows he's in trouble. For one thing he's got a record. For another, the dead kid isn't exactly a stranger - and he's no friend.

So slowly the net begins to close around 17-year-old Dooley, a troubled lone wolf who has a couple of strikes against him already. Not many are on Dooley's side; in fact at times he even wonders whether his uncle - a retired cop - thinks he's guilty again. There's a big question of trust in their uneasy relationship, and his uncle is the only one standing between Dooley and big time disaster.

The dead kid's sister Beth is someone Dooley would like to have think better of him as well - but she also suspects he's involved in the crime. And all around him are other teenagers at school and in the world he's drawn into who would like to pin him with responsibility for a growing number of murders that swirl through the city.

Norah McClintock, five-time winner of the Arthur Ellis juvenile crime award, has now moved into a different realm with a richly detailed novel aimed at older teens. Gritty, hard-edged, " Dooley Takes the Fall "is the first in a trilogy of mysteries about a troubled teenager struggling to free himself from the tentacles of his past and the implications of the present conspiracies that surround him.