Winter Hawk Star.

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.

Brouwer’s three novels share several content similarities. Each features a protagonist who plays major junior hockey for one of the Western Hockey League’s 22 teams. While the central character experiences a hockey-related challenge that is somehow linked to another player, he and that player also become entangled in some kind of life-threatening mystery, one which additionally involves a girl who becomes the hero’s romantic interest. Winter Hawk Star and Blazer Drive were originally published in 1996 as part of the Lightning on Ice series.

In Winter Hawk Star, Tyler Watson, 18, is a marginal fourth line winger at risk of being cut by the Portland Winter Hawks. The team boasts a Gretzkyesque rookie, 16-year-old Riley Judd, but Riley’s inflated ego has brought him into conflict with the coach, who assigns both Tyler and Riley to doing community service with an inner-city youth activity centre. There, Tyler stumbles upon the fact that a pharmaceutical company is using the centre’s kids as unsuspecting subjects in an illegal drug trial.

Blazer Drive finds 17-year-old Josh Ellroy, a winger for the Kamloops Blazer, having to deal with an angry Luke Zannetti, who has been demoted to center Josh’s second line. The book’s mystery portion revolves about the apparent slaughter of a valuable bull on Josh’s parents’ ranch, an event which turns out to be just part of a larger criminal happening.

In Hitmen Triumph, Nate and Nolan, aka Radar, Andrews, 17-year-old twins (think Vancouver’s Sedin twins, with Radar resembling Jim Kyte, the legally deaf former Winnipeg Jets player), play on the same line for the Calgary Hitmen. Their former on-ice chemistry evaporates when Radar suspects that his brother’s sudden access to large amounts of cash is related to Nate’s being involved in a movie DVD piracy scam being controlled by a local biker gang.

The three books are part of the Orca Sports series, and, while Brouwer writes authentic on-ice game scenes, readers initially attracted by the books’ full-colour hockey action covers may be somewhat disappointed that the mystery portions, although very well constructed, tend to overwhelm the hockey content. Recommended.