They'll Never Catch Us

They'll Never Catch Us

YA thriller
My studio was my girls' bedroom when they were growing up. When
I inherited it I built the decor around the art with which they
adorned the walls. Amber was a big Nightmare On Elm Street fan. She
used rainbow nail polish colors to paint "EVERY TOWN HAS AN ELM
STREET," a Freddy Kreuger quote that implies that every town, no
matter how postcard picturesque, has its dark secrets. It's a premise
many YA thriller authors have exploited successfully.
Jessica Goodman goes in the opposite direction in They'll Never
Catch Us. The town, Edgewater, in which her narrative is set, has
been nicknamed Deadwater. In the not so distant past it was the place
where a serial killer, a villain who was never arrested, brutally
murdered several cross country runners awhile back.
Goodman's sibling narrators, Stella and Ellie, are cross country
runners, the top ones on their school team.
Stella is focussed on her sport. She had been considered a shoe
in for an athletic scholarship at a prestigious university that could
help her escape her town. But an incident in which she was accused of
badly injuring a runner from another school during a race has resulted
in a fall from grace. She's even had to spend the summer at a place
that combines running and anger management. Now it's her junior year.
If the coaches who check out high school meets don't approach her--
game over.
Sophomore sister, Ellie, is a lot more social, hanging with her
crowd and enjoying parties. But she has her own secret. Over the
summer she's been hooking up with another girl's boyfriend. This led
to a crisis neither was well prepared to handle and an action neither
would want their peers to learn about.
As fall semester starts Stella and Ellie are no longer the only
elite runners on their team. Mila, Connecticut State Champion, is the
new kid in town. In fact she beats Stella in the first race of the
year.
One morning Mila doesn't return from an early run. The Steckler
sisters, especially Stella, are prime suspects in her disappearance.
Has the killer returned or spawned a copy cat? Or could cross
country competition be getting a little too intense? Come on out to
Edgewater and find out for yourself.
Goodman established herself as a master of YA thriller crafting
her debut novel, They Wish We Were Us. They'll Never Catch Us is its
very worthy successor. Let's hope she's working on a spine chilling
third!
On a purrrsonal note, I envy skilled runners like Stella, Ellie, and
Mila. I wish I was waking up early to take off like a cheetah and
winning medals at meets. What stalls me each and every time I try to
take it up is shin splints which never let up. The only way I can run
painlessly is backward. Sad but true. (Jules)
I'm a super fast runner. I can leave all the hoomans in the dust
(Tobago).
A great big shout out goes out to the writers of mysteries and
thrillers who are making the dark a bit more menacing for us all in
this lead up to Halloween.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway





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