View source for Promise Boys by Nick Brooks

{{infobox1
|title=Promise Boys
|author=Nick Brooks
|reviewer=Ruth Ng
|genre=Teens
|summary=Told in an interesting, unusual way, I found this was a quick read that worked really well as an older teen mystery story.
|rating=4
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|pages=304
|publisher=Macmillan
|date=February 2023
|isbn=9781035003150
|website=https://www.thenickbrooks.com/
|cover=1035003155
|aznuk=1035003155
|aznus=1035003155
}}

When the principal (headmaster) of Urban Promise Prep school is murdered, three boys find themselves called into the police station as suspects.  Each, seemingly, has a grudge of some description against Principal Moore, and each could have been there at the time of his murder.  But who killed him, and why, and if any of the boys are innocent, will they be able to clear their names?

The plot of this story unfolds in a really interesting way.  Told through snippets of information from different sources, as a reader you are slowly building a picture of what happened as the story moves along.  We start in the present, with the thoughts of other staff, students, a transcript from a police interview, before we start moving from the day before the murder, to the day of the murder, to what is happening after the murder.  With the sections labelled as you read, you don't lose track, and you start to build a picture of who the three boys are, and the situations they find themselves in.  I liked the variety you get with this method of telling the story, with it feeling like you're getting a view of the community as a whole, through commentary, news pieces, text messages and other pieces.

We learn in the first part of the story about the three boys of colour who find themselves facing questioning by the police.  JB is the smart kid who really wants to escape the city he's living in and go to college.  But through a series of unfortunate events, he winds up in a huge argument with Principal Moore on the day of the murder, and is seen afterwards, covered in blood.  Trey is on the basketball team, a potential star player who seems tough on the outside, and he too is seen threatening to murder Moore on the day he is killed.  Finally Ramón is a kid who enjoys cooking, and has a side hustle selling pupusas around the school (I googled it - it's like a sort of flat bread) to help out with financial issues at home, but on the day of the murder he is caught with the pupusas and Principal Moore throws them into the bin.  Ramón's reaction to this lands him in detention, along with JB and Trey.

I found myself quickly involved in the boys' stories.  The school is set up as a rigorous, ground-breaking school that is 'saving' boys with troubled backgrounds from being lost in the state school system, giving them a chance at a different kind of life.  But despite the lofty aims, the reality of the school is one of intense, and often unfair, discipline run much like a prison, where the kids are constantly held in check and on edge the whole time, because at any moment their chances could be taken away from them.  The story shows the realities of life for boys of colour in the US, who are always at fault, even when they aren't.  The strict discipline starts to seem more and more like abuse, and as you learn the truth behind each boy's situation, and what happened with the principal for each of them, you sense the unfairness, and the inevitable ending that they seem to all be facing.

You also begin to see that many boys could well have been holding a grudge against the principal, who isn't really the shining example to the community that he is being hailed as.  The boys begin to try to find ways to absolve themselves, investigating the truth behind not just the murder, but the school itself, and there does seem to be a glimmer of hope.  Even with the weight of societal judgements and pressures, perhaps they can still escape their situations and discover the truth.

Although it's described as a thriller, I felt this was much more of a mystery story.  I didn't have those heart-racing moments you get with a thriller, but instead I was enjoying the unravelling of events as the boys investigated the murder themselves.  I really enjoyed reading their thoughts and plans and schemes as they discover what really happened, and I felt that the last half of the book, where the real investigations begin, was definitely the better half of the book.  It's a fast read, with short chapters and some twists that keep you reading for just a bit longer, and just a bit longer again.

You might also enjoy reading [[One of Us Is Lying by Karen M McManus]]

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[[Category:Crime]]