Thirteen-year-old October Schwartz is new in town, short on friends, and the child of a clinically depressed science teacher. Naturally, she spends most of her time in the Sticksville Cemetery, which just happens to border her backyard. And that backyard just happens to be the home of five dead teenagers, each from a different era of the past. Soon, October befriends the five dead kids. Together using Octobers smarts and the dead kids abilities to walk through walls and get around undetected and stuff they form The Dead Kid Detective Agency, committed to solving Sticksvilles most mysterious mysteries.
THE DEAD KID DETECTIVE AGENCY by EVAN MUNDAY (9781770900837 ECW Press, Oct 2011) has been shortlisted for the Sunburst Award in the Young Adult Category!
The Sunburst jury says: "The heroine of this romp of a ghost story --the almost 14-year-old October Schwartz , a misfit goth girl whos writing a horror novel -- makes friends with five ghosts in the cemetery behind her house. When her favourite teacher dies under bizarre circumstances, October enlists the dead kids to help her solve the case. Theres a nice twist on the bullying of outsider geeks in this clever, comic, and moving novel thats narrated through multiple POVs. It also dishes up Canadian history in a deliciously lively way, including the 1970 October Crisis with a great FLQ-related element to the plot."
