(Credit: Kevin Connery)

Lying, Stealing, and Other Ways to Save the Planet by Curtis Campbell features a gay teenage would-be investigative reporter who is angry, reckless, and too smart for his own good. John O’Neil wants to fight injustice and the corporate greed that’s killing the planet inch by inch, but he’s also a blackmailer set out for revenge: against the local tycoon whose golf course is taking over a nature preserve created by John’s recently deceased activist grandfather; against the tycoon’s son and his gang of thugs who get their kicks by locking John in a portable toilet and rolling it around; and against his best friend who isn’t talking to him. He throws in his lot with two oddball climate activists the rest of his high school consider to be on the lunatic fringe, and together they set out to thwart the corporate tycoon and his bullying son.

This is a promising book flawed by an imbalance between character and narrative. The unsteady unfolding of the plot takes place in the background of John’s comic sniping. He teeters on the fine line between an abrasive unlikeable character, and an isolated, troubled teenager who is struggling to find his way. John has a clever, stinging sense of humour that gets him into trouble with the bullies and his fellow activists, and eventually this alienates the reader, too. Aside from his ability to deliver a zinger, there isn’t much to admire about John.

Campbell tends to drop an important scene halfway through and starts the next chapter sometime later, leaving the reader to figure out what happened. The themes of the book – activism, climate change, friendship, grief, loneliness – are in danger of being submerged by John’s unrelenting comic monologue.

Curtis Campbell’s first book, Dragging Mason County, about high school drag queens, was a runaway hit with readers. Teenagers are drawn to subversive humour and edgy loners, and there are some laugh-out-loud lines in Lying, Stealing, and Other Ways to Save the Planet. His characters are creatively eccentric, and the story has all kinds of potential that sadly isn’t realized.