Deadman’s Castle
by Iain Lawrence
Intermediate, Middle School    Ferguson/Holiday    256 pp.    g
3/21    978-0-8234-4655-1    $17.99

This is a creepy adventure tale, a family story, and a story of an outsider finding his way in “the freak show known as middle school.” Igor Watson’s father once saw a man do a terrible thing. He reported it to the police, and ever since, the man has been after them, vowing revenge. “Watch for a man with a lizard tattooed on his skin,” Igor’s father told him years ago, and since then they have been on the run across the country, chased by the Lizard Man and under the care of the “Protectors.” They’ve lived in so many places, in so many new homes, and under so many aliases that narrator Igor doesn’t even remember his real name. Now he is twelve, and he wonders about his father being the only one ever to have seen this Lizard Man. Is their predator real, or is his father “crazy,” as some people say? This tension drives the gripping tale to a pulse-pounding conclusion. An author’s note describes the “bird’s nest of memories” that led to this story.

From the March/April 2021 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.