In his heart-poundingly suspenseful, elegantly crafted series debut, Steeplejack, A.J. Hartley (the Darwen Arkwright and Will Hawthorne series) introduces a tender and steely heroine in a racially tense, class-clashing world harking back to 19th-century South Africa.
Seventeen-year-old steeplejack Anglet "Ang" Sutonga--fixer of brick clock towers and factory stacks in the industrial city of Bar-Selehm--is, as usual, dangling precariously above the cobbled streets far below. She's unnerved, because the Beacon, a priceless luxorite stone that has burned brightly above the skyline for 80 years, is, impossibly, gone. Worse still, a steeplejack named Berrit has just plummeted to his death on his way up to help her. But when Ang spots his body in the alley, she also discovers he has an obvious knife wound. Was he... murdered? The scene is set, and Ang's sense of foreboding is contagious.
Ang is determined to solve Berrit's murder. At first no one else seems to care about her fellow brown-skinned "Lani street brat" whose "fall" was in the newspaper between "an advert for corsets and a piece about a garden party." But when the boy's death is linked to the theft of the Beacon, Ang is recruited by a local politician to investigate, and her sleuthing role becomes official. A city in crisis, breathtaking rooftop chases, harrowing assaults, blood oaths, love and loyalty, brutal betrayals and impressive detective work by the intelligent, intuitive Ang unfold in a fascinating, vividly described setting that includes smog and slums, gas lamps and opera houses, baboons and bushbabies. A political, multilayered mystery-thriller with a strong, impressively fierce heroine. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness