Tristan is the acclaimed author of Two Wolves, The Fall, Detention, Cop & Robber, Scar Town, Nit Boy and Ginger Meggs. His books for upper middle grade and young adults are fast-paced mystery thrillers with carefully considered serious themes at their core.
In this fast-paced sequel to Two Wolves, Tristan Bancks throws siblings Olive and Ben Silver back into danger. But, this time, Mum is working two jobs to try and make ends meet, Olive is in high school and doing pretty well and older brother Ben is close to achieving his dream of graduating from the police academy.
When Olive reluctantly lets her Dad back into her life, her fragile sense of home, future and safety soon collapse and she has a split-second decision to make – let her dad go with a bag filled with stolen cash or give chase. Unsure if she is driven by vengeance or love, Olive follows her Dad through the streets and back into danger. It’s not long before Ben also finds himself dragged back into his father’s world of grift, neglect and crime.
Driven on by the need to know if her father ever loved her, Olive leads them on into even greater danger and Ben knowingly risks destroying his dream to keep his beloved sister safe. Bancks throws in car chases, betrayals and knife-edge escapes to move the story along at a blistering pace. He also gives readers the kind of grand finale where Olive and Ben doing the right thing means risking the loss of everything.
There are ethical dilemmas aplenty and Bancks is adept at offering readers the chance to explore what they might do to protect their loved ones if justice and injustice, and love and neglect were so egregiously entangled.
