Price of an Orphan-C

by Patricia Carlon

Book Overview

Johnnie is a nine-year-old city orphan recently placed with a couple on a cattle ranch in the Australian outback. But he is not quite the foster child they had in mind. He is cheeky and lazy, cowardly... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1569471738
• ISBN13: 9781569471739
• Release Date: October 1999
• Publisher: Soho Press
• Length: 190 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Suspense in book form!

In "The Price of an Orphan" Patricia Carlson combines traditional detective fiction and spine-tingling suspense in one quick read of a novel. Johnnie, a nine year old orphan of criminal parentage is sent to live with a childless couple on a cattle station in Australia. Seen as a lazy, stubborn boy with a penchant for lying, his foster parents and the surrounding community naturally do not believe him when he claims to have witnessed a murder. Unfortunately for Johnnie, he did witness the murder, and the murderer knows he was there. The latter two-thirds of the novel consist of Johnnie and his foster mother, Kay, struggling to escape a cunning trap set by the murderer in the wild, harsh outback. Telling the rest of the tale would give away the suspense, thus the best part of the story, however, rest assured that the reader is in for an exciting ride.To create this twisting, suspenseful story, Carlton incorporates ideas that are traditionally not found in detective fiction. One is her lack of a main "detective". It takes a community to solve this puzzling mystery. Carlton also utilizes psychology in two ways. One is obviously in the use of psychological suspense for the reader. The other is a study in the cruelty and self-absorption that can be created within the mind of an individual under duress. Finally, Carlton's setting the mystery in Australia underlines the country's past that is rooted in criminality and escape from identity. When Australia was still a penal colony of England, many criminals were sent there in order to "start over" (i.e. away from the law-abiding citizens of England). Many others escaped to Australia to reinvent themselves away from all who knew them. These aspects of criminality are utilized in Carlton's novel concerning both Johnnie (the communities lack of belief in his stories due to his criminal parentage) and the main villain. This novel is quite the interesting combination of detecting and psychology...a quick, wonderful book!

Who Are You, Australia?

Patricia Carlon's high-energy mystery novel, _The Price of an Orphan_, stretches the tension to the breaking point as she takes us to the scene of a crime at the edge of civilization in New South Wales, Australia. Johnnie, an Sydney orphan who lives on a cattle station in the outback with his foster parents, Stuart and Kay Heath, has adjusted poorly to rural life, acting out despite Kay and Stuart's efforts to care for him. Consequently, when Johnnie claims to have witnessed a mysterious person, described only as "Felt Hat," murder a woman at the caves, Stuart and Kay write off his tale as yet another of his constant lies. In hopes of repairing their relationship, Kay accompanies Johnnie on a camping trip with the station owner. But the frayed ropes of this tattered family's interdependence are tested to the utmost when the camping trip thrusts Johnnie and Kay directly into the path of the murderer. Despite - or perhaps because of - revealing the identity of the murderer soon into the story, the narrative maintains a breathtaking pace, faltering only in the lightning-quick resolution at the novel's end. _The Price of an Orphan_ redefines the traditional concept of family, exhibiting bonds of trust that hold stronger than those of kinship, individual ambition that triumphs over long-held familial land inheritance laws, and women who prove more capable of survival than men. Simultaneously, Carlon subverts the traditional models of the detective - nine-year-old Johnnie and Felt Hat _both_ work to thwart each other - and the villain - Felt Hat's motives for the murder lie far deeper than mere malice or revenge. Carlon plunges the readers into the action by tracing Johnnie's movements through the eyes of the yet-unidentified Felt Hat, stripping away our own comfortable identities to take on the perspective of the marginalized, the identity-less, the unnamed, and in doing so muddies the often unambiguous protagonist-antagonist interplay between detective and villain. Questioning all notions of the heroic, presenting characters who embody in-betweenness and shifting identities, Carlon crafts an appropriate novel for Australia, the nation that arose from a British penal colony. _The Price of an Orphan_ shakes off the remnants of colonialism and forges a new image of civilization from the harsh wilderness of the outback.

A Price worth every penny

Patricia Carlon's Price of an Orphan is an extremely rich and unconventional detective novel. It contains no detective in the traditional sense, but it has normal characters that perform tasks of detection and act on hunches that end up solving the mystery. The main mystery solver is a nine-year-old named Johnny and the other case cracker is a secondary character that isn't even introduced until late in the book! Set in Australia, the plot begins with a woman who is introduced and promptly murdered in the first chapter with no apparent motive and no suspects. Young orphan Johnny witnesses the crime from a distance and gathers enough facts and evidence to prove foul play, but the killer traps him before he gets a chance to stir up too much trouble. The rest of the book is an intense battle of wills between Johnny and the killer with a totally unexpected and humorous conclusion. Johnny is the only one who has a clue that something seriously sinister is at work right from the start. No one in the town believes him not only because he is young and has a history of lying, but also because his biological father is well known to be a criminal. This is an interesting plot element because Australia is, historically speaking, a country populated by children of criminals. It began as a penal colony where criminals from Britain were exiled. Therefore, if you go back a few generations, anyone with deep roots in Australia would be proven to have criminal blood in them. Johnny is an interesting symbol for the young country. He is automatically distrusted and, as his compulsive lying proves, he does have problems. But he ends up being right about the murder and people only believe this boy who cried wolf when it has become too late. In addiction to a compelling, textured villain, Carlon's thriller contains a strong message of looking beyond the surface and not dismissing people or what they have to say just because of their past. This challenges reader assumptions along with implicitly criticizing its characters. For a strong suspense narrative to go along with a positive sociopolitical message, look no further than this Orphan.

Australian Thriller

In her 1960's novel, Price of an Orphan, Australian novelist Patricia Carlon creates a suspenseful thriller in which a mischievous, 9-year-old orphan, Johnnie, stumbles upon a murder and pieces together the facts of the crime. The bulk of the story tells how the murderer then torments him in the vast, rugged New South Wales outback. Carlon's masterfully woven tale gives her readers genuine surprises throughout the entire book. The reader is oblivious even to the murderer's gender until a quarter of the way into the book. Even though Carlon's lack of a central detective figure can arguably exclude her thriller from the typical detective fiction genre, mistaken identities, false hopes and surprises keep readers anxiously turning the page until the conclusion of the story. However, much of the novel's magnificence lies not in the mystery itself, but rather the psychological realism in the plot's uncanny parallel to Australia's history and identity. As a rebellious, ill-behaved, convict's son, the main character Johnnie recalls Australia's founding as a penal colony. Moreover, the shocking revelation that the main villain has come to the city of Quidong to begin a different identity subtly reminds readers how Australia has traditionally served as a place for banished criminals to start a new life. The novel's description of the vast outback constantly adds to the notion that Australia is ripe for creating new identities. A post-colonial reminder of Australia's involvement in World War II echoes behind the terror of the villain's atrocious acts and the plot's suspense. Although the story refuses to give the villain any striking redeeming quality, the fact that the villain's history includes a brutal war camp prison stay in Malaya begs readers to see the villain as a victim of her past circumstances. For the sake of England, the villain suffered in a prison camp and, Carlon's story implicitly argues, thus developed a ruthless, sadistic personality. In the midst of the villain's constant, cruel treatment to Johnnie and his mother, Carlon recalls that the villain has learned her brutal and pitiless methods from the war camp in which the villain was victim. The history of prison war camps makes it impossible for readers to feel full contempt towards the villain. Carlon's story ends with an ambiguous conclusion, as the readers never discover the ultimate fate of the villain and Johnnie. However, this ambiguity emphasizes the tension between feeling utter contempt villain's actions in the story and feeling sympathy for the villain's brutal history in the prison camps.

this book keeps you on your toes!

the price of an orpan was the first book i had read by patricia carlon. for 2 days i could not get my nose out of the book. she kept the mystery of hte killer going until the right moment. i look forward to reading her other books. i would recommend this book to anyone who likes suspense.i hope you enjoy and happy reading!