About the Author:
Elle Cosimano grew up in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, the daughter of a maximum security prison warden and an elementary school teacher who rode a Harley. As a teen, she spent summers working on a fishing boat in the Chesapeake Bay. A failed student of the hard sciences, she discovered her true calling in social and behavioral studies while majoring in psychology at St. Mary's College of Maryland. Fifteen years later, Elle set aside a successful real-estate career to pursue writing. Her debut novel, Nearly Gone, was an Edgar Award Finalist, winner of the International Thriller Writers' Best Young Adult Novel Award, and winner of the inaugural Mathical Book Award recognizing mathematics in children's literature. Elle lives with her husband and two sons in Mexico, somewhere between the jungle and the sea. Website: www.ellecosimano.com. Twitter:@ellecosimano.
From School Library Journal:
Gr 9 Up—In juvenile detention, where John Conlan is serving time (he was convicted of a double murder but was spared from adult prison to avoid being near his father), he's known as Smoke and deals in information. Want to find out if your girl is faithful? If your mom is okay? Ask Smoke. His fellow inmates assume that he has strong connections on the outside, but the truth is he can go outside—sort of. A few years earlier, the teen was beaten to death by his father, then revived by the EMTs. He now exists somewhere between life and death and is able to leave his body and slip through the prison walls while everyone is sleeping. The tenuous grip his spirit has on his body is weakening, and he's beginning to think the information he digs up is doing more harm than good, so he's decided to quit his side job completely. When one of his last fact-finding missions leads him to a tough and alluring girl named Pink and he comes across some information that might point to who actually committed the crime he was accused of, Smoke realizes that he has to stay in the game, even though it's getting more dangerous by the day. The story plods along, and the gritty tone results in a feeling of coldness rather than suspense. VERDICT Descriptions of prison life and politics abound, which is the novel's greatest strength, but a slow pace and clunky turns of phrase make this thriller a secondary purchase.—Beth McIntyre, Madison Public Library, WI
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.