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Review:

Nemesis: The beast within by Catherine MacPhail


cover image Allen and Unwin
What a humdinger. Told from several perspectives, Ram is on the run, but without any idea of who he is or why he is running. On the moors with a beast slathering behind him, he eagerly takes the offer of a lift in a car with a stranger. The man takes him to his isolated home, a farmhouse in the middle of the moors with no neighbours, where he meets the man's smiling wife. Ram is dumbfounded when he is told that he is their lost nephew, Noel. He has run away before, and must be protected lest he do it again.

Uncle William takes him to the isolated school the next day introducing him as his lost nephew. Ram has no idea what is going on, but little by little things begin to fall into place. With the other two in the school, Kirsten and Faisal, the group begins to investigate the murder of a boy whose body is found on the moors. They all believe it to be the abused boy, Paul, one of their former classmates who disappeared several weeks before. Into this mix comes the Dark Man still on the hunt for Ram, and MacPhail cleverly plots the story with a huge number of exciting near misses as the Dark man and Ram seem almost to dance within an eye space of each other.

Nemesis (series) by Catherine McPhail has a boy on the run. I didn't read number one, Into the shadow, but only this second book, The beast within, and found it was so exciting that I will read number one. The first book should give me information about why the boy is running, and clear up some of the mysteries inherent in reading the second in the series, but I found it nevertheless riveting. I'm sure lower secondary and upper primary students will love it. The two books mentioned are now available with two more about to be released. (Sinister intent and Ride of death).
Fran Knight





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