Review 6 The Circle of Blood

 

 Ferguson, Alane. The Circle of Blood: a Forensic Mystery. New York: Viking, 2008. Print.

Annotation:

Cameryn Mahoney is like most high school teenagers except that she works as an assistant for her father who is the county coroner.  She has just recently met her mother and is trying to figure out how her mother fits into her not so ordinary life when a murder case implicates her mother and Cameryn must now use her forensic and investigative knowledge to clear her mother’s name and find the real killers before her mother is found guilty of a crime Cameryn is fairly certain she did not commit.

Justification for Nomination:

I will have to admit openly that after the first chapter of The Circle of Blood I was ready to write it off as a good book, worth reading but not a Printz award nominee.  As I finished the book I realized that my hasty judgment was wrong – very wrong.  Alane Ferguson has written a book that is filled with great mystery and gritty realism.  The research she did into how the forensic work is done shows strongly in the scenes involving crime scene investigation and autopsy.  What really makes The Circle of Blood work however is her main character: Cameryn Mahoney.  Cameryn’s story is improbable but not implausible and it is made all the more plausible and believable because Cameryn is a fully developed character.  She is a young woman who has a goal and a dream: to be a forensic investigator but  she is still a young woman who has to deal with her emotions and the strangeness of having  a long lost parent suddenly return to her life.  Cameryn must assist her father with his coroner duties and still go to High School herself.  In between crime scenes Caneryn must deal with all the normal things High School girls have to deal with.  Without such a brilliantly complex yet believable character The Circle of Blood would just be another whodunit with no charm or relatablility.  Because of my reaction to this book I will seek out and read the books that came before it and cannot wait to read the book that will follow this one (The Circle of Blood ends with a great and really creepy cliffhanger).YA readers and adults will enjoy getting to know Cameryn Mahoney and will really become engrossed in the mysteries she finds herself entangled in.  The Circle of Blood is a sleeper hit in my reading this summer and goes to prove that you cannot judge a book by its cover – or at least its first chapter.

Genre:

Mystery/Thriller