Password: Murder

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

“‘Murder,’ It said again, louder this time, and with the word a
wind came up, like a howl. Harley’s father, the ghost, the apparition,
seemed to grow larger. A cloud passed in front of the moon, blotting it
out, but instead of making his father harder to see, the deepening
darkness had the opposite effect. His father glowed, his skin took on a
greenish tinge. ‘I was murdered,’ It said.”

Young Harley is the 17-year-old heir to Dansker-King, Incorporated. He
has just recovered from a nervous breakdown triggered by the fact that
he was driving the car that killed his father. Upon returning home,
Harley is shocked to learn that his mother, Gertrude, has remarried. The
man she married, C.J. King, is a former junior business partner in the
family business and one of his late father’s best friends. Harley is
having a hard enough time adjusting to his new life when strange things
begin to happen: when he is alone an apparition appears, a ghost that
bears a physical resemblance to Harley’s father, and in a tormented
voice the spirit claims it was murdered.

“Murder most foul” is the theme of this retelling of Hamlet by
Norah McClintock, twice winner of the Ellis Award for Crime Fiction.
Although she follows the basic plot of the play, she is not afraid to
inject her own intriguing subthemes. Highly recommended.