So I haven't just been reading picture books over the last few days, there's been some novels in there too. One of which was Past Crimes by Carol Matas. Matas has written quite a bit of historical fiction for kids, mostly to do with the Jewish experience. Which is cool, because a lot of Canadian historical fiction is dominated by the French/English thing.

Anyways, this book is not historical fiction, though there a few things do pop up. Ros is a single mother, going to university in Palm Springs. She's a single mom because her husband was shot while working as a police officer. So Ros starts having these weird dreams, where she's in the Spanish Inquisition, at the same time that a lot of weird stuff keeps happening to her. First, there's the whole dead husband thing, though that was a while ago. More recently, she's been shot at, and had her house burned down. Ros has to try and figure out the connection, with the help of a poetry reading cop named Allan.

The story itself was actually pretty interesting, even though I had the baddie pegged not too far into the book. There were some good twists, though, that made me reconsider my conclusion.

So why didn't I love this book? I'm not totally sure on that, but I think its because I never really felt like I connected with Ros. So much of her personality is tied up with being a mother, that I found her difficult to relate to. I also found it weird that she's a very young, very single mother, and Matas didn't really deal too much with that. All that being said, it was an enjoyable way to spend a few hours, with an interesting reincarnation twist on a classic mystery.

Past Crimes by Carol Matas
ISBN 1552638413
192 pages