Short story mystery writer Daniel J. Hale teamed up with his high school-aged nephew Matthew LaBrot to write two mystery novels geared toward a younger middle-grade audience. At first, the two were using their online writing sessions as a way to grow closer, but soon they realized that their ideas were worth pursuing more seriously. The first of these books is Red Card, published in 2002, which pits the young teen protagonist against a killer in the midst of a soccer tournament. The novel won that year’s Agatha Award in the Best Children/Young Adult Fiction category – a literary award given to “mystery and crime writers who write in the ‘cozy mystery’ subgenre (i.e. closed setting, no sex or violence, featuring an amateur detective).” The novel’s protagonist and first-person narrator is thirteen-year-old Ezekial Tobias Armstrong, known as Zeke, who until now has had a very unusual upbringing. Together with his parents, Zeke has spent his life traveling around the world on behalf of an international relief organization, building hospitals and clinics where medical care was poor or nonexistent. Along the way, after living in seven different countries, Zeke has mastered several different languages, can play a variety of sports like a professional athlete, and has learned to drive at a stunt-driver level. Not only that, but in his former life, Zeke was involved with solving several crimes, so he has developed some detective skills as well. Now that he is thirteen, Zeke would like to try out living the life of a more average teenager, so he moves in with his uncle Dane Armstrong in Dallas, Texas. Here, he can just go to middle school and play on the local soccer team, the Dallas Sundogs, where he becomes the star player. All is going well for the Sundogs, who find themselves at the Lone Star Invitational Soccer Tournament after a successful season playing under the guidance of beloved Coach Ryan O’Connor. In the tournament’s first game, just as the timer is running out, Zeke kicks the winning goal. However, confusingly, the ref calls offside on what is clearly a legal goal. When Coach O’Connor confronts the ref about the wrong call, he loses his temper and the ref gives him a red card, which in soccer means that he is ejected from the game and the field. Another player’s dad, Mr. Crow, steps in as substitute coach and the team goes on to win the game. When Coach O’Connor mysteriously doesn’t show up for the next match later that day, Mr. Crow also leads the Sundogs to win against the Miami Hurricanes. The next morning, Zeke sees Coach O’Connor lying in a pool of blood, unconscious and his life in danger. It is clear that someone has shot him in the head and left him for dead. As the first person on the scene, Zeke draws on what he has learned from years working in and around hospitals to stabilize the man and to call for help. After Coach O’Connor is ostensibly safe in the hospital, the team gathers to regroup. They decide that they will do their best to win the tournament in their coach’s name. As team captain, Zeke does his best to keep up his teammates’ morale. At the hospital, there is yet another attempt on Coach O’Connor’s life. The police rush into the room and find Mr. Crow seemingly holding a pillow over the coach’s head. Assuming that he is trying to suffocate the coach, the police arrest him. It seems like an open and shut case, Mr. Crow’s motivation arising from his desire to become the winning team’s coach instead of O’Connor. However, Zeke is convinced that the police are wrong, and the real killer is still out there. When he realizes that three of the team dads who came to the tournament with the boys are now missing, he and his best friends decide to solve the mystery of who is trying to kill the coach. They spend time gathering as many clues as they can, but at first their attempts to tell the police about their suspicions are completely ignored – after all, they are just thirteen-year-old boys. At this point, Zeke’s co-investigators want to give up. However, Zeke can’t help himself – he must solve the mystery. With time running out, and with growing alarm that the killer is now after Zeke and his friends as well, the teen detective races to put what he has learned together. The novel ends with Zeke unraveling what happened, catching the real killer, and freeing the innocent Mr. Crow by using a telltale clue: the killer’s cigars, the smell is of which lingers in the crime scene, eliminating Mr. Crow as a suspect because he only ever smokes cigarettes.

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Daniel J. Hale

Matthew LaBrot

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