Black Forest Secret

Dave Jenkinson is Associate Dean of the Faculty of Education at the
University of Manitoba.

If middle-school readers can get beyond this book’s drab, unappealing
cover, they will discover that Cowan has produced a very competent
action-adventure story that uses the events leading up to the recent
unification of Germany as its backdrop. For the last two years,
junior-high student Paul Dunnaway has been attending a West German
school near Baden-Baden, where Paul’s father, an air force Major, is
in charge of the Canadian military base’s security. While Paul is
visiting the Black Forest home of his German friend Markus Diehl, he and
Markus stumble on the secret that Markus’s father is part of a ring of
spies who have infiltrated the Canadian base. Paul’s knowledge causes
him to be kidnapped by Markus’s Uncle Stephan, another spy, and
transported to East Germany. Paul’s father frantically pursues the
kidnappers; however, questions of good/bad guys become superfluous when
East Germany’s political collapse causes everyone to be on the same
side and Paul is simply returned to his father.

Though Paul is the story’s principal narrator, Cowan occasionally
switches an entire chapter’s perspective to that of Paul’s father.
The plot moves somewhat slowly until Paul discovers the secret, but
after that its speed will easily hold readers’ interest. Because
illustrations are not usually found in fiction written for middle-school
readers, their presence in Black Forest Secret may erroneously suggest
to some casual browsers that the book is aimed at a younger audience.
Rarely on the pages that describe the action they are meant to depict,
the 11 black-and-white illustrations almost detract from the book’s
worth.