Reluctant teen readers will love this murder mystery told in free verse. The story is set in a small Australian mining town, Burruga, where many of the residents are coal miners. The story is told by several residents in the town and through their perspectives, the reader learns about the town, the people and their values. Suspicion falls on several of the men for the murder of a young teenage girl. As the personalities of these men unfold, the reader will be left wondering who the real murderer is. Not recommended for middle school because of descriptions of sexual encounters. ( )

loved this book. This book is in poetry format with a great murder mystery.

Reviewed by Sally Kruger aka "Readingjunky" for TeensReadToo.com

Set in a small Australian town and the area surrounding it, COLD SKIN is the story of brothers Eddie and Larry Holding, their parents, friends, and townspeople. What ties them together besides community connections is the disappearance and murder of a young girl.

Eddie Holding is on the edge of adulthood. He'll be finished with school soon, and his dream is to put his size and strength to good use by working in the mines. It's a dangerous occupation and his father disapproves, but for years Eddie has watched the local young men leave school to work the difficult job and make a decent wage. His father, on the other hand, fought hard in the war and then came home to do a boy's job working at chore-like jobs for a neighboring farmer. Eddie has never understood why his father puts up with ridicule from the locals about his cowardly job.

An observer of people, Eddie watches those around him.

He watches as his older brother Larry drinks himself into a stupor each night at the local bar and then comes home to vomit in the garden and snore in bed until morning. There's the local mayor who never got a chance to fight in the war with the rest of the town's men. He spends his time bragging about his uncontested victory and gathering votes to assure he continues as leader of the town. Mr. Butcher, a high school teacher, leads a mysterious double life. During the week he teaches at the local high school and each weekend heads to the city. Eddie decides to follow his teacher one weekend and discovers he has a fondness for young girls. And speaking of young girls, Eddie experiences his first love with Sally and, at the same time, fantasizes about Colleen, whose disappearance and death tear apart the town.

Author Steven Herrick tells the story of Burruga, Australia, in prose verse. The alternating view points give readers a glimpse into the minds and hearts of all the characters. Young Eddie guides the fast-paced story and provides the connections necessary to understand the people of this tiny town. ( )

“If you don’t look at what’s in front of you, /you get overrun from behind.” Herrick’s novel-in-verse is a meditation on the hold the past can have on people, as their actions threaten to sink their futures under waves of paralyzing regret or rash decisions driven by unfulfilled desires. Set in a tiny Australian mining town a few years after World War II, it is a simple tale of two generations (told in nine distinct voices) struggling to cope with the murder of a young woman. Eddie Holding wants nothing more than to quit school and work in the mines, like all the other grown men in Burruga. His father Albert has forbidden it, fearful of the dangerous work and filled with rage at his perceived cowardice during the war. Other characters include the aging editor of the town’s small newspaper, a young police sergeant, the glad-handing mayor, and a lecherous teacher at the high school. Everyone has their issues, and the murder of young Colleen, destroying the town’s sleepy status quo, is the stimulus for each character’s fascinatingly varied manner of confronting their demons. A violent and morally ambivalent resolution to the murder case thus is almost as unsettling for the sense of relief it provides some of the characters (and the reader) as it is for the nature of action it consists of. Herrick does a great job of creating a distinct voice for each character, with the exception of Eddie’s love interest Sally (who is rather one-dimensional and unnecessary), using clean, simple verse that avoids elaborate metaphors and overblown imagery in favor of the occasional stroke of insight, made more powerful for its subtle, offhand manner. The murder doesn’t really present much of an opportunity for readers to solve the case, but does make for an exciting psychological study of small-town life turned upside down. Mild profanity throughout, a scene of prostitution, heavy alcohol use, and a disturbing scene of violence. Ages 13+.

Australia, small town, after World War II. The men have returned and most have gone back to work in the mine. The main character is Eddie, an older teen who wants to quit school and work in the mine but his father won't allow anyone in his family in the mine. A teenage girl is murdered, and the reader learns more about the people of the town and their demons. Told in verse in the voices of different characters. A good story, though the characters are too one-dimensional. ( )