Shepherd

Tom Clay, the 12-year-old hero of this suspenseful cat-and-mouse thriller set in 1840 from Ned Kelly Award–winner Jinks (The Inquisitor), was transported to Australia after being caught poaching in England. Tom has begun a new life as a shepherd in New South Wales for Mr. Barrett. Tom takes pride in never having lost one of his charges and enjoys his work, but he runs afoul of a violent employee of Mr. Barrett, Dan Carver, who boasts of killing both white men and native Australians and keeping their body parts as trophies. Jealous of Tom’s ability to read and skill at herding sheep, Carver lures Tom into a forest, ostensibly to search for a lost animal, and his attempt on the boy’s life fails. Carver escapes, only to resurface weeks later, still bent on killing the boy. The bulk of the book consists of Carver’s efforts to attain his bloody objective and Tom’s efforts to thwart them. Multiple pulse-pounding sections compensate only in part for the lack of character depth. This amounts to a YA novel with a high violence level. Fans of Jinks’s YA City of Orphans trilogy may want to take a look. [em](May) [/em]