The second installment in S. T. Cameron’s Young Explorers adventures series, finds eleven-year-old CJ Kask teaming up with his friends to solve the mystery of a decades-old train crash in World War One-era America. It is well-heeled territory – CJ’s father is an archaeologist, giving CJ a good excuse to go jet-setting around the world in subsequent stories – and PHANTOM EXPRESS finds CJ and his father in the town of Danford, North Dakota, where the eponymous train crashed into a river forty years previously.
The story’s pacing is fast and clinical, and Cameron treats his characters with a light touch, offering brief portraits rather than lengthy exposition. The emphasis is firmly on plot and motivation, and the feel is reminiscent of a Hardy Boys mystery, with the esthetics of a Young Indiana Jones Chronicle story, or perhaps one of the more cerebral novels of Willard Price. CJ is a typical Roger Hunt-esque protagonist, with a good range of basic competencies, a (for the most part) logical mind, rampant curiosity, and just enough intrepidity to maintain the stakes. However, unlike the aforementioned authors, Cameron’s sensitivities extend as far as including two girls, Sadie and Laura, on what would otherwise be a very boy-dominated story.
There are only two quibbles. The first is the denouement, which, though not objectionable as a way of ending the story (readers of the first book in the series, Inca Wraith, will understand), is not too difficult to figure out in outline from the preceding. The second is the presence of a few typos, mostly due to a missing word or a wrongly edited line, which detracts somewhat from the book’s otherwise faultless appearance. These issues aside, PHANTOM EXPRESS does what it does very well. It offers adventure, some delightfully matter-of-fact period detail, a little detective work, and action in the company of a group of characters who manage to be both likable and dependable – a solid, readable addition to today’s canon of period adventure tales.
S. T. Cameron’s PHANTOM EXPRESS is a well-plotted, exciting addition to today’s canon of middle-grade historical adventure stories.
~Craig Jones for IndieReader