Quid Pro Quo
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Quid Pro Quo is a high-stakes, fast-moving legal thriller about real people, and funny ones at that. Cyril MacIntyre's mother is an ex-street kid who dragged her son to all her law-school classes, then proceeded to get kidnapped. That aside, Cyril's life isn’t too different from that of other thirteen-year-olds. He has all the usual adolescent issues to deal with: parent problems, self-esteem problems, skin and hair problems, and girl problems. But he has legal problems too. And he's got to solve them if he wants to save his mother's life.
Quid Pro Quo won the Arthur Ellis Award and the cbc Young Canada Reads 2009 award. It has been nominated for numerous awards, including the Edgar Allan Poe and the Ann Connor Brimer. This 2018 edition has been updated with a new cover.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Unable to afford a babysitter, Cyril Floyd MacIntyre's single mother, Andy, brought Cyril along to law school as she pushed through her degree, beginning when he was 10. Now he is an adolescent and his mom is a lawyer for the disenfranchised, working at a hole-in-the-wall firm. Byron, a mysterious veteran from Andy's homeless past, blackmails his way into their small apartment and, annoyingly, takes over Cyril's room; even more troubling, Andy suddenly disappears. To find his mother, Cyril uses his lawyerly prowess to try and piece together clues from one of her cases. Cyril is sarcastic and hard on his young mother, who has worked hard to leave a life on the streets and provide for her son, and his comments about her and her clients are often off-putting ("I'm 14... She's 29. You do the math. Pretty nasty, eh?"). But investigation and legal components each chapter starts with a definition of a legal term that relates to the chapter's events will engage fans of straightforward mysteries. Ages 9 12.