Strange Times at Western High: A Natalie Fuentes Mystery

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.

In this opening novel of a new juvenile mystery series, Natalie Fuentes,
the daughter of a Jewish mother and an Argentinian father, both
journalists, has just moved to Toronto with her father following her
parents’ recent divorce. The action begins on Natalie’s first day at
Western High when she accidentally witnesses the school’s chief
caretaker, Isaac Kaufman, being severely beaten by a masked male. The
attack sends Kaufman to the hospital’s ICU. Learning who carried out
the attack and why become Natalie’s focus, especially after she finds
out that Kaufman was physically assaulted eight months earlier. The
story also includes a secondary mystery involving missing school
supplies and sports equipment. Natalie is joined in her sleuthing by
Jacob, a fellow student and computer whiz who is also Kaufman’s son
and who, Natalie discovers, had a run-in with the law for “hacking.”

What separates Pohl-Weary’s mystery from others is her use of
non-WASP central and supporting characters, as well as her inclusion of
numerous electronic technologies familiar to today’s youth. In
addition, Natalie “publishes” her own photocopied zine, My Very
Secret Life, and the bottom portion of most of the book pages contains
illustrations ostensibly from her zine. When not being an investigator,
Natalie is an ordinary teen engaged in responding to the challenges of
being the “new kid in school” and, in particular, having to deal
with a trio of blondes who seem to control Western High’s social
scene. Regarding the book’s mystery, the number of suspects is
somewhat limited and the motivation for the “crime” is
underdeveloped. Nonetheless, it is a good read. Recommended.