Dancer

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Following her father’s death, a depressed Hilary “Mousie” James
bonds with a cantankerous stallion, Daring Dancer. Now, two years later,
Mousie, 16, and Dancer have just won the Toronto Royal Winter Fair’s
jumping competition. As a result of this accomplishment a wealthy
neighbor, Samuel Owens, resolves to acquire Dancer for his
Olympics-bound niece. When Mousie and her mother, Christine, refuse to
sell Dancer, Owens schemes to obtain the horse by illegal means.

Since the bad guy’s identity is known from the outset, Dancer is
unsatisfying as a mystery. And in what is supposed to be a young-adult
novel, the subplot involving Christine’s relationship with an old
high-school sweetheart is given undue emphasis. Finally, there is
something jarring about the introduction of an English ghost into what
is otherwise a piece of realistic fiction. Not a first-choice purchase.