You Killed Wesley Payne
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4.2 • 13 Ratings
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
He's come to do a job.
A job that involves a body.
A body wrapped in duct tape found hanging from the goal posts at the end of the football field.
You Killed Wesley Payne is a truly original and darkly hilarious update of classic pulp-noir, in which hard-boiled seventeen year-old Dalton Rev transfers to the mean hallways of Salt River High to take on the toughest case of his life. The question isn't whether Dalton's going to get paid. He always gets paid. Or whether he's gonna get the girl. He always (sometimes) gets the girl. The real question is whether Dalton Rev can outwit crooked cops and killer cliques in time to solve the mystery of "The Body" before it solves him.
Sean Beaudoin (Going Nowhere Faster, Fade to Blue) evokes the distinctive voices of legendary crime/noir authors Dashiell Hammett and Jim Thompson with a little bit of Mean Girls and Heathers thrown in for good measure. It'll tease you, please you, and never ever leave you. Actually, that's not true. It's only a book. One that's going to suck you in, spit you out, and make you shake hands with the devil. Probably.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Beaudoin offers up a fast-paced mashup of noir homage and high school satire that's often witty, but founders under the weight of its ambition. Dalton Rev models his life on his favorite detective, Lexington Cole, and brings his hard-boiled sensibilities to Salt River High a place that resembles "school" in only the loosest of senses where cute Macy Payne has hired him to find out who killed her brother, found hanged on the football goalposts. Rev's wanderings bring him into contact with assorted cliques (helpfully outlined in a guide at the front of the book), which include everyone from poetry-worshipping Plaths to brainy Euclidians as well as Lee Harvies (anarchic, gun-toting snipers). Beaudoin (Fade to Blue) wavers too often between fleshing out his characters and keeping his world off-kilter (a subplot involving Rev getting into Harvard is particularly painful). The resulting concoction is in the surreal vein of recent books like Going Bovine and Andromeda Klein, but never quite meshes the social satire of the cliques with Rev's concerns about his family, and the muddled ending does the story no favors. Ages 12 up.
Customer Reviews
Amazing!!!!!!
This is a great book that keeps you laughing and on the edge of your seat at all times. I wasn't able to put the book down, even after I finished it. Definitely check it out.