Though it is almost 400 pages long, the nonstop action and many startling revelations will keep teens transfixed until the very last sentence. Bloor's brooding, densely plotted page turner is an incredibly original novel that will engage teens on several levels. Roberta's quest to find her mother's killer weaves together several skillfully constructed subplots, including a shady political scheme to ruin the mall, real and imagined hate crimes against an Arab store owner, and how the Crusader itself, a virtual reality game, serves as the catalyst that ignites and unites these seemingly unrelated factors in Roberta's life. She keeps her mind off the fact that the arcade is slowly going under and that her father ignores her existence, but she cannot ignore the fact of her mother's brutal murder seven years ago. His follow-up, Crusader, delves even deeper into the dark side of suburbia, exposing racism, virtual violence, and even murder behind the sunny facade of a Florida strip mall.įifteen-year-old Roberta works hard every afternoon and weekend in the family business, a virtual reality arcade in the West End Mall. The central character in Crusader is 15yearold Roberta Ritter, who lives in south Florida with her widowed father. This novel was Bloors followup to the awardwinning Tangerine. A steamy, swampy Florida setting and the threat of a repressed memory are two of the elements in Edward Bloor's first young adult novel, Tangerine, that made it an instant suburban gothic classic. Crusader is a novel by Edward Bloor which was published on October 15, 1999.
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