The Confessional (review)

High-school junior Mac Malone is found stabbed to death on his front lawn, and there's a long list of people who might have been pleased to do the deed. It could have been Bernie Martinez, the quick-tempered Mexican kid Mac sent to the hospital with a broken arm. Could have been the kid Mac was in debt to for drugs. Possibly it was the guy whose girlfriend Mac was having sex with, or the creepy loner who had heretofore been "invisible" to his fellow classmates at their El Paso Catholic school. Or it could just as easily have been someone in the community, angered by an inflammatory letter Mac wrote to the newspaper about the city's celebration of Cinco de Mayo despite a Mexican suicide bomber's destruction of the U.S.-Mexico bridge a year before. As the ensemble cast alternately relate pieces of the story and try to figure out who committed the murder, they expose the complex web of mistrust and outright hostility among the Anglos, Mexicans, and Mexican-Americans who uneasily share the local turf. Powers confronts issues of anti-immigrant prejudice and antiterrorist hysteria with brutal honesty, describing a world not often depicted in literature for young people. Unfortunately, the book never fully integrates these social concerns with the murder mystery. Indeed, it takes the easy way out by exposing the murderer as a garden-variety wacko—an Anglo teen so troubled and foul-mouthed (if his hapless efforts at kidnapping and "interrogation" aren't sufficient tipoffs, certainly his obscene parody of the "Hail Mary" should be) that he is a too, too obvious suspect. While this may not be the most tautly plotted of mysteries, it should appeal to YAs who like their school stories dark and their characters burdened with dirty secrets.