Customer Reviews

The Price of an Orphan

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This book would have made a fine short story. For the first 16 pages -the suspense is breathtaking. Then the story becomes sodden with unbelievable actions and motives. The characaters are not well-formed. It goes downhill in a bucket as the action becomes repetitive and confusing. I closed the book at page 113. I snuck a look at the last page, p.190, but did not find resolution.

I have read all of Carlon's recently published books in the U.S. They are over 30 years old and the first 2 or 3 were refreshing, but the last two including this one left me cold. In both of them the implausiblily of essential elements of the plots spoiled the book for me, although Carlon is an excellent writer. In Orphan, we have a 9 year old with the analyical mind of a 35 year old with an IQ of 150. His ability to think through events and likely scenarios is incredible, to say the

least. In addition to this wunderkind, we have a couple of events that absolutely are so unbe- lievable that they take your breath away. Without giving the plot away, a phone call made by a stranger regarding a sleeping pill and his subsequent actions, are mind boggling in the cir- cumstances. NO ONE WOULD EVER HAVE DONE WHAT HE DID in the circumstances, but it is essential to the plot. Another phone call made by a gas station owner is almost as unbelievable, and is also important to the plot. And then the resolution of the novel is left wide open. I read the last 5 pages 3 or 4 times to be sure that I didn't miss it, and still the fate of the culprit is unclear to the reader. A lousy way to end a thril

In "The Price of an Orphan" Patricia Carlson combines traditional detective fiction and spine-tingling suspense in one quick read of a novel. Johnnie, a nine year old orphan of criminal parentage is sent to live with a childless couple on a cattle station in Australia. Seen as a lazy, stubborn boy with a penchant for lying, his foster parents and the surrounding community naturally do not believe him when he claims to have witnessed a murder. Unfortunately for Johnnie, he did witness the murder, and the murderer knows he was there. The latter two-thirds of the novel consist of Johnnie and his foster mother, Kay, struggling to escape a cunning trap set by the murderer in the wild, harsh outback. Telling the rest of the tale would give away the suspense, thus the best part of the story, however, rest assured that the reader is in for an exciting ride.
To create this twisting, suspenseful story, Carlton incorporates ideas that are traditionally not found in detective fiction. One is her lack of a main "detective". It takes a community to solve this puzzling mystery. Carlton also utilizes psychology in two ways. One is obviously in the use of psychological suspense for the reader. The other is a study in the cruelty and self-absorption that can be created within the mind of an individual under duress.
Finally, Carlton's setting the mystery in Australia underlines the country's past that is rooted in criminality and escape from identity. When Australia was still a penal colony of England, many criminals were sent there in order to "start over" (i.e. away from the law-abiding citizens of England). Many others escaped to Australia to reinvent themselves away from all who knew them. These aspects of criminality are utilized in Carlton's novel concerning both Johnnie (the communities lack of belief in his stories due to his criminal parentage) and the main villain. This novel is quite the interesting combination of detecting and psychology...a quick, wonderful book!

Carlon's novel is saved by the presence of Johnnie, the 9 year old orphan who witnesses a murder in the first pages of the novel. No one believes Johnnie, and because no one believes him, the rest of the novel takes place - his desperate fear of the villain ("Felt Hat"), and his longing to stay close to people, but then a camping trip with his adopted mother and another lady, who of course could not be - would never be - the killer. So of course Johnnie thinks the trip will be safe, and of course he's wrong.

Like so much detective fiction, too many of the key plot developments are a bit too convenient. Unlikely coincidences,
strangers who are amazingly observant and conscientious...and voila, the mystery develops and is resolved. But despite the presence of the improbabilities, the novel still reads well and still holds our interest.

This owes itself in part to the fact that the main character is a child, and he is nevertheless one of many who play the role of "detective" in this unconventional detective novel. The reader likes Johnnie because he is an innocent child, and we sympathize because he is telling a truth which no one believes and because he is already an orphan under the guardianship of a couple who don't seem to care very much about him at first.

While this novel is intriguing because it is not conventional - there is no single detective figure in the novel, but rather it requires a combined (and conveniently so) effort, and the villain is not one of the usual suspects - it still falls flat at times. The beginning is packed with suspence, and while Carlon retains some of the suspence by blurring (at times, before the culprit is revealed) the voice/thoughts of Johnnie and the killer, eventually it just fizzles. With all of the convenient twists and turns, the reader just takes it for granted that at some point, some phone call is going to make it all make sense. The sense that Johnnie or his mother will be seriously hurt, the sense that perhaps the killer might get away with the crime after all - this sense might be strong at first, but eventually it dissolves. The question is not "if" but "when and why not already, this journey has gone on long enough."

Patricia Carlon's high-energy mystery novel, _The Price of an Orphan_, stretches the tension to the breaking point as she takes us to the scene of a crime at the edge of civilization in New South Wales, Australia. Johnnie, an Sydney orphan who lives on a cattle station in the outback with his foster parents, Stuart and Kay Heath, has adjusted poorly to rural life, acting out despite Kay and Stuart's efforts to care for him. Consequently, when Johnnie claims to have witnessed a mysterious person, described only as "Felt Hat," murder a woman at the caves, Stuart and Kay write off his tale as yet another of his constant lies. In hopes of repairing their relationship, Kay accompanies Johnnie on a camping trip with the station owner. But the frayed ropes of this tattered family's interdependence are tested to the utmost when the camping trip thrusts Johnnie and Kay directly into the path of the murderer. Despite - or perhaps because of - revealing the identity of the murderer soon into the story, the narrative maintains a breathtaking pace, faltering only in the lightning-quick resolution at the novel's end. _The Price of an Orphan_ redefines the traditional concept of family, exhibiting bonds of trust that hold stronger than those of kinship, individual ambition that triumphs over long-held familial land inheritance laws, and women who prove more capable of survival than men. Simultaneously, Carlon subverts the traditional models of the detective - nine-year-old Johnnie and Felt Hat _both_ work to thwart each other - and the villain - Felt Hat's motives for the murder lie far deeper than mere malice or revenge. Carlon plunges the readers into the action by tracing Johnnie's movements through the eyes of the yet-unidentified Felt Hat, stripping away our own comfortable identities to take on the perspective of the marginalized, the identity-less, the unnamed, and in doing so muddies the often unambiguous protagonist-antagonist interplay between detective and villain. Questioning all notions of the heroic, presenting characters who embody in-betweenness and shifting identities, Carlon crafts an appropriate novel for Australia, the nation that arose from a British penal colony. _The Price of an Orphan_ shakes off the remnants of colonialism and forges a new image of civilization from the harsh wilderness of the outback.

Patricia Carlon's Price of an Orphan is an extremely rich and unconventional detective novel. It contains no detective in the traditional sense, but it has normal characters that perform tasks of detection and act on hunches that end up solving the mystery. The main mystery solver is a nine-year-old named Johnny and the other case cracker is a secondary character that isn't even introduced until late in the book!

Set in Australia, the plot begins with a woman who is introduced and promptly murdered in the first chapter with no apparent motive and no suspects. Young orphan Johnny witnesses the crime from a distance and gathers enough facts and evidence to prove foul play, but the killer traps him before he gets a chance to stir up too much trouble. The rest of the book is an intense battle of wills between Johnny and the killer with a totally unexpected and humorous conclusion.

Johnny is the only one who has a clue that something seriously sinister is at work right from the start. No one in the town believes him not only because he is young and has a history of lying, but also because his biological father is well known to be a criminal.

This is an interesting plot element because Australia is, historically speaking, a country populated by children of criminals. It began as a penal colony where criminals from Britain were exiled. Therefore, if you go back a few generations, anyone with deep roots in Australia would be proven to have criminal blood in them.

Johnny is an interesting symbol for the young country. He is automatically distrusted and, as his compulsive lying proves, he does have problems. But he ends up being right about the murder and people only believe this boy who cried wolf when it has become too late.

In addiction to a compelling, textured villain, Carlon's thriller contains a strong message of looking beyond the surface and not dismissing people or what they have to say just because of their past. This challenges reader assumptions along with implicitly criticizing its characters.

For a strong suspense narrative to go along with a positive sociopolitical message, look no further than this Orphan.

What would you do if you witnessed a murder? Probably you would notify the authorities and you would expect them to take your claim seriously. How would you feel if you had no one to talk to because you knew no one would believe your incredible story? That seems impossible, right, as police and detectives are bound by their duty to follow up on every claim no matter how outrageous? But what if they didn't? What would you do? What if you knew the killer knew you knew? What would the murderer be thinking? How would you survive instincts that, if they would kill one human being, would most assuredly get you out of the way, too?

These are the very questions and issues that Patricia Carlon explores in her mystery novel The Price of an Orphan, except in this suspenseful novel, the witness is a rambunctious, attention seeking, compulsively lying, nine-year-old foster son, Johnnie. Set in the rugged bush of wild Australia, a setting which also highlights the subtle commentary that Carlon makes on the Australian identity versus the identity created by British colonialism, this small troublemaker happens upon a murder-in-action while exploring some forbidden caves. As he should have been at the town fair where everyone else was also supposedly enjoying the rodeo type atmosphere, Johnnie is truly at the wrong place at the wrong time.

What follows is an account of Johnnie's thought processes as he determines what should be done about his unsought knowledge and the license plates he found hidden near the crime scene. At this point, however, Carlon begins to take full advantage of her semi-omniscient first person narration style as she also allows readers to experience the murderer's point of view as well; thus, readers track Johnnie's desperate attempts at survival versus the malicious plans of the killer to protect him/herself from detection. The novel progresses in this fashion until, ultimately, Johnnie, in his effort to escape and reach his father in Sydney, agrees to accompany his foster mother, Kay, and Miss Mings, the food-loving station owner, on a camping trip in the outback, designed as a rite-of-passage for the irresponsible Johnnie.

As you might expect, this trip turns into a desperate struggle as the killer endeavors to force Johnnie to reveal the location of the now hidden license plates, which would serve as validation of Johnnie's claim and a clue as to the victim's identity. At this point in the novel, however, Carlon's style of narration turns frustrating and predictable as, just as readers know characters' thoughts, so too does the killer seem able to read all characters' thoughts. For various reasons, readers also lose track of Johnnie's thoughts, which lessens the excitement and intensity of the novel. Having become accustomed to Johnnie's mentality earlier in the novel, having it stripped in the middle causes readers to lose the feelings and expectations they have invested in the novel thus far, turning the reading into a chore rather than a pleasure.

Moreover, lack of a dénouement or further explanation at the mystery's close, not to mention the frustratingly simple discovery of the license plates, makes the novel seem to end abruptly and, unlike in a Sherlock Holmes novel in which there is extensive elaboration as to how the conclusion was ultimately drawn, Carlon gives the most basic of details with a very anticlimactic, uncharacteristic downfall of the villain in the end. In fact, although Carlon tries to add a twist by not revealing every character's thoughts and actions, the entire resolution is based on a weak premise of medication overdose that, in my opinion, barely holds the novel together with its obliviousness to the true evil at hand.

Thus, while the novel begins by holding the reader's attention with a strong narration that grips the reader in suspense and intrigue, it steadily weakens to a frustrating imprisonment and struggle in which good never conquers evil, though common ignorance of the truth finally saves the day.

I've never been a fan of Columbo. From the very beginning, you know who did it; most of the fun is taken out of the mystery by a premature revelation. While this book is similar (the Bad Guy is identified by Chapter Seven), Carlon's style and wonderful characterization saves the day. In the first pages of the book, the reader feels as though he or she is driving along in the Australian outback. Carlon subtly wraps in every detail of the scene-dust, sun, cicadas, foliage-and since a great deal of this book takes place in this same setting, the reader is treated to a startingly vivid sense of setting. Carlon possesses an equal amount of skill when dealing with her characters. Using a third person narrator to focus on one character at a time, Carlon deftly captures a sense of the eager father, the reluctant mother, and even the criminal's mind. Her true success, however, lies in the portrayal of Johnnie, the orphan boy adopted by Stuart and Kay. Whether biking in the outback or hoping to escape from his captor, Johnnie is always spunky and endearing; the reader cannot help but root for him. Even if the mystery is over far before the book ends, the reader wants to make sure that nothing too terrible happens to Johnnie, and that is reason enough to finish this book.

In her 1960's novel, Price of an Orphan, Australian novelist Patricia Carlon creates a suspenseful thriller in which a mischievous, 9-year-old orphan, Johnnie, stumbles upon a murder and pieces together the facts of the crime. The bulk of the story tells how the murderer then torments him in the vast, rugged New South Wales outback. Carlon's masterfully woven tale gives her readers genuine surprises throughout the entire book. The reader is oblivious even to the murderer's gender until a quarter of the way into the book. Even though Carlon's lack of a central detective figure can arguably exclude her thriller from the typical detective fiction genre, mistaken identities, false hopes and surprises keep readers anxiously turning the page until the conclusion of the story. However, much of the novel's magnificence lies not in the mystery itself, but rather the psychological realism in the plot's uncanny parallel to Australia's history and identity. As a rebellious, ill-behaved, convict's son, the main character Johnnie recalls Australia's founding as a penal colony. Moreover, the shocking revelation that the main villain has come to the city of Quidong to begin a different identity subtly reminds readers how Australia has traditionally served as a place for banished criminals to start a new life. The novel's description of the vast outback constantly adds to the notion that Australia is ripe for creating new identities. A post-colonial reminder of Australia's involvement in World War II echoes behind the terror of the villain's atrocious acts and the plot's suspense. Although the story refuses to give the villain any striking redeeming quality, the fact that the villain's history includes a brutal war camp prison stay in Malaya begs readers to see the villain as a victim of her past circumstances. For the sake of England, the villain suffered in a prison camp and, Carlon's story implicitly argues, thus developed a ruthless, sadistic personality. In the midst of the villain's constant, cruel treatment to Johnnie and his mother, Carlon recalls that the villain has learned her brutal and pitiless methods from the war camp in which the villain was victim. The history of prison war camps makes it impossible for readers to feel full contempt towards the villain. Carlon's story ends with an ambiguous conclusion, as the readers never discover the ultimate fate of the villain and Johnnie. However, this ambiguity emphasizes the tension between feeling utter contempt villain's actions in the story and feeling sympathy for the villain's brutal history in the prison camps.

Johnnie claims he saw a diabolical killer named "Felt Hat" commit murder. No one believes Johnnie because he is infamous for fabrication and has an uncannily insubordinate attitude towards authority. His attitude sounds strangely unoriginal in terms of assessing a 9-year-old boy. These plain and standard characteristics of a young child are just the beginnings of the countless problems found in this redundant mystery story.
This book does not fail because of its lack of a central detective to piece together the clues. This book fails because the adults in this story refuse to acknowledge the facts that Johnnie reveals to them.
Carlson's tale tells about a boy who is just like any other boy, foster parents who are annoyed with a disobedient child, a murder victim who no one seems to care about, and a plethora of adults including the town police officer Coombs, who choose not to get involved with the murder investigation because Johnnie always lies.
Johnnie, who is the most interesting and compelling character, ultimately does something to save him and his foster mother from the vicious grasp of "Felt Hat." Unfortunately for the reader, Johnnie, spends much of the latter portion of the book knocked out asleep, leaving the reader nothing more than the endless blathering of his mother, Kay, against "Felt Hat." This small battle is hardly believable considering Kay is not only bigger and stronger than "Felt Hat," but is decades younger than her. This raises the question whether "Felt Hat" is a strong villain, or are the adults weak heroes. I personally like to think of the adults as pure morons.
When I finally reached the completion of this book I felt that the small character that saves the day for Kay and Johnnie, had saved the day for me as well. The story ends abruptly with a dissatisfactory ending. Carlson fails to reveal the aftermath of "Felt Hat's" actions. One moment Johnnie and Kay are in some peril, the next second they are cuddling in the arm's of Johnnie's father, Stuart. What happened in between? Then again, do I really care?