Rat Life (review)

There's not much shakin' in fourteen-year-old Todd's New York burg in May of 1972, but even so, a kid needs more spending money than Todd can squeeze out of the vending machine he runs at his parents' motel. He therefore jumps at the chance of part-time work at the local drive-in theater, offered to him by an edgy young man, Rat, who pops up in one of the stranger moments of Todd's life—as he's forced to euthanize a stray pup he tried to rescue. Todd is fascinated by Rat, a Vietnam vet not much older than himself, and by Rat's seedy life with a drugged-out mother. Rat, though often morose, proves a good friend to Todd, at least until Todd begins to sniff out connections between Rat, a violent patron at the motel, and a body of a murder victim recently fished out of the river. Rat is a truly engrossing character, at once sympathetic and menacing, and although Todd is intrinsically less interesting, he functions well as the innocent instrument with which readers probe the shadowy corners of Rat's sad life. A gunpoint abduction (or is it?) and a torrential flood should keep readers engaged even after they think they've figured out "who done it." Tweens and teens who associate Arnold with goofy picture books from their bygone youth are in for an eye-opener.