Kingsport, Nova Scotia’s Major Tripe was a noted prankster, but no one laughed at his final joke – bequeathing his castle on the St. Lawrence River to his closest friends, all of whom despised one another. In his latest mystery for young people, The Castle on Deadman’s Island, Ontario author Curtis Parkinson returns to his teen sleuths Neil, Graham, and Crescent – last seen in Death in Kingsport. After a short preface, outlining the titular castle’s unsavoury reputation and its rumoured curse, readers find themselves in a mystery that has already begun.

Graham is willing to brush off a near-miss with a speeding car, but his best friend Neil is not. After a second “accident,” Graham begins to fear not only for himself, but for the life of his aunt, one of the castle’s three inheritors – especially as all evidence seems to point toward the other co-owners. Aunt Henrietta has mysteriously disappeared, but is she a victim of the castle’s curse, or of something even more sinister?

While allusions are made to the trio’s previous adventure, Castle is certainly friendly to new readers. Our heroes’ bonds of friendship provide a firm support for the reader to hold onto even as the author steers them again and again into danger and uncertainty.

Though the novel is set during the Second World War, Parkinson does not overburden the reader with history, providing just enough detail to let the period take on its own life as the narrative careers forward to its exciting climax on the St. Lawrence River.