Three students with public grudges and no alibis become prime suspects when the principal of their all-boys charter school turns up dead in the gripping and propulsive social critique Promise Boys by Nick Brooks.
Urban Promise Prep seems perfect on paper, but Principal Moore runs the regimented Washington, D.C., charter school with an iron fist and increasingly erratic behavior. After Moore is shot dead at his desk, the police focus on three students serving detentions that afternoon: hot-tempered lyricist J.B.; basketball star jokester Trey; and loyal aspiring chef Ramón. Each of the boys maintains his innocence and, with help from friends, they combine efforts to investigate Moore's murder, hoping to identify the real killer before one of them is charged for the crime.
The whodunit untangles in a dynamic format with short chapters that feature frequent temporal shifts, and it splices the three boys' perspectives among other media such as anonymous e-mails and news stories. Because each boy is seen--and judged--by his fellow suspects, readers engage in a layered process of evaluating assumptions and biases throughout the community. This cinematic thriller deftly entertains readers while leveling a sharp indictment of society's mistreatment of Black and Latinx teenage boys. "At Promise and at home, there's no room for error.... I am guilty until proven innocent," laments Trey. The teens' authentic dialogue is a credit to the years filmmaker Brooks (Nothing Interesting Ever Happens to Ethan Fairmont) spent teaching in Washington, D.C., schools. This is a tense and urgent mystery that can help break the cycle it condemns. --Kit Ballenger, youth librarian, Help Your Shelf