The Golden Rat (review)

It's little wonder that sixteen-year-old Baoliu stands convicted of the murder of his vacuous stepmother; since his father's recent remarriage he has swiped his deceased mother's jewelry from her room, spurned all lessons by his tutor, and shamed his family through his open defiance of his father. The judge is willing to commute his death sentence if he confesses to the crime and agrees to a life of enslavement, but Baoliu insists on his innocence. This leaves his family with one last chance at clemency: through the twelfth-century Chinese legal custom of ka-di, another man is paid to be beheaded in his place (the money will be a boon to his impoverished family) and Baoliu plummets in status to a "golden rat," a disinherited outcast left to make his own way in the world. While struggling for meager daily rations and shelter, he and an equally needy new friend go on a quest to prove his innocence and solve the mystery of why an old family retainer would have sacrificed his life for the young man. The riveting premise and details of the harsh medieval Chinese legal system promise a ripping tale, but so much time is devoted to plotting and so little to character that readers never quite connect with the distraught Baoliu. Moreover, stiff and occasionally anachronistic dialogue ("'Could you give someone a message for me?' 'Sure. No problem,' said the guard") break the tension of Baoliu's desperate flight. Nonetheless, the sheer drama of the ka-di plot line will drive middle-schoolers along, and this will be a quick, diverting read for kids unprepared to invest their reading time in the Hooblers' richer Asian crime dramas in the Judge Ooka series (The Ghost in the Tokaido Inn, BCCB 9/99, et al.)