The Cold Kid Case (A Sparky of Bunker Hill Mystery Book 1) by Rosalind Barden; Bet Your Bottom Dollar That This Mystery is Such Fun
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: Rosalind Barden’s YA Historical Mystery, The Cold Kid Case, is what you get when you give Little Orphan Annie Nancy Drew’s detective skills. You get a charming scrappy kid protagonist and a fun engaging mystery.
Sparky is an 11 year old street smart orphan living in Depression Era Bunker Hill, California. Her life of running errands for a local bookie, picking pockets, stealing food scraps, and hiding in out of the way places is interrupted when she becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a young girl since Sparky was the one who found the body. Sparky hides out in Creepy House, a mansion owned by Tootsie, an eccentric but kind silent movie actress. Sparky, Tootsie, Tootsie's loyal butler Gilbert, and Sparky’s protective friend Bobby are on the case to investigate the girl’s death and clear Sparky’s name.
The Cold Kid Case is reminiscent of one of those old Kid Adventure films starring the likes of Shirley Temple, The Little Rascals, Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Hayley Mills, Tatum O’Neil, Jodie Foster, Gary Coleman, Aileen Quinn, Sean Astin, Coreys Haim and Feldman, Ke Huy Quan, Macaulay Culkin, The Olsen Twins, Mara Wilson, Dakota and Elle Fanning, or the many kids who front Nickelodeon or Disney shows. They starred precocious kids who have either busy, distracted, neglectful parents, or no parents at all. They are born with smart mouths, plenty of attitude, uncanny survival instincts, and a penchant for finding adventure wherever they turn. Adults are usually clueless or evil. Though there are occasionally good kind adults who help the kids, mentor them, and if orphaned might adopt them. The kid's lives might be in danger but they usually come out on top and often end up in a better situation than when they started.
Sparky is that type of kid and Borden has fun with her character. Her first person narration is a delight to read with its 1930s slang and tough kid attitude. (“Once (Bobby) tried kissing me. That’s when I socked him good and down he went….Didn’t faze him. He kept on proposing, and telling other kids that I was his ‘girl’ which made me think he warranted another whammo.”) Her savviness in sneaking into and hiding in various spots around Bunker Hill come in handy when she has to run from police officers, violent gangsters, or potential murderers. Even small touches like how we barely learn about Sparky's past, don’t even know her real name or if she even has a real name add to her characterization as a kid who had to survive on her own and harbors no illusions about how the world works.
In fact, there is an edge to this book that is often found in some of the best Kid Adventures: an awareness of the darker real world that is around these kids. Sure, they have fantastic adventures and more often than not succeed in them but they aren’t without serious conflicts. These kids are often faced with deaths of parents or other family members, poverty, divorce, addiction, family arguments, criminal activity, abuse, and adults who want to kill them and don’t care that they are kids. Often these conflicts surround the adventures, maybe as an instigating factor or exist to make the kids even more vulnerable and unable to rely on the adult world around them. Sure Annie might have sung that “the sun’ll come out tomorrow” but she certainly knew that most of the time it didn't.
That is at play within young Sparky. It’s hard to avoid the reality of the Great Depression when it’s all around her. She isn’t the only orphaned or abandoned kid and she sees adults unable to survive and fighting for last scraps of a meal or employment at a demeaning dead end job that can only admit five people. If her elders have a hard time surviving in these circumstances, then what chances do kids like her have? In fact, the dead girl’s backstory is such an example. The identity of the murderer and the motive are pretty appalling and become more terrifying the longer one thinks about it. This might be a YA Novel, a Kid’s Adventure, even some form of a Kid’s Wish Fulfillment in many ways but don’t under any circumstances think that it avoids the real world around it. In fact it plunges headlong into it. There is a strong sense of reality and a savage bite within the fantastic proceedings. Sparky knows how the world works. She just chooses to fight against it in her own way.
Some of the bite of reality gets lost once Tootsie enters the scene but in her own way, she also plays into the Adventure subgenre. Supporting characters in these types of stories, particularly adults, are often broad and larger than life with very little subtlety and Tootsie definitely plays that trope to the hilt. Of course her being a former actress definitely adds to that. If this was a movie instead of a book, the actress playing Tootsie would reject the catered lunch and craft services and prefer instead to gnaw on the scenery.
She is very melodramatic, vain about her appearance, and often waxes nostalgic about her former roles and stardom days. There is an almost youthful playful innocence like she has the childlike nature that Sparky lacks. Sparky directly faces the reality of the Great Depression while Tootsie prefers instead to get away from it and live in an idyllic fantasy.
Despite its name, Creepy House is anything but. It is a study in fantastic imagination of what a movie star’s home would look like with its ornate furniture, room sized bathtub, and particularly Tootsie's two stuffed leopards which were once real leopards that she had stuffed (and Sparky loves so much that Tootsie allows her to keep them in her new bedroom). Tootsie’s butler, Gilbert, also plays into this fantastic setting. He is the straight man to his mistress’ comic antics and encourages her while occasionally keeping her grounded and providing some direction to Sparky. He is stern but willingly indulges the schemes of the two women in his life. He provides shelter and alibis when authorities come looking for Sparky and plays along with Tootsie’s elaborate ruse to extract information from a rival actress to help the girl.
Like Sparky, Tootsie is also never referred to by her real name, though in her case it’s probably for artistic reasons and adds to her eccentricities. While she is clearly concerned about her new young charge, Tootsie indulges Sparky’s investigations even furnishing disguises and at one time appearing incognito to assist her. Tootsie is a maternal figure who is loving but acts like a big kid herself. She offers enough of a safe harbor for Sparky to find shelter and freedom for the girl to be herself and learn from her mistakes.
It is not too much to assume that some legal papers, a court visit, a new last name and a change of address for Sparky, and a new title that begins with “mo-” for Tootsie are in the duo’s future. Not since Din Djarin and Grogu in The Mandalorian have I wanted to see a surrogate parent/child relationship become an adopted reality more.
The Cold Kid Case is a fun, bright, sassy mystery that plays into the genre with a lot of wit, bite, and heart.
