Bobby Lee Claremont and the Criminal Element

September 1, 2017
A runaway fights injustice on a train ride from New Orleans to Chicago. It's 1923, and 13-year-old Bobby Lee Claremont, a white boy, has cleaned out the poor box of the Catholic orphanage where he lives and made his escape north, hoping to take up with Chicago's gangs and live a life of criminal ease. The train is also carrying the body of a nightclub owner who died under mysterious circumstances, as well as the man's widow and baby boy. Bobby Lee is drawn to the widow, who reminds him of his own single mother. However, she's guarded by a set of toughs, and it turns out that the leader of a black jazz orchestra traveling in the colored coaches has ties to her as well. Bobby sets out to unravel the mystery as the train chugs north. Astonishingly--and unbelievably--he accomplishes this in the 24-hour journey, mostly due to the willingness of every other character to spill secrets to an adolescent boy. It's far more talk than action, and it's not easy to keep the hired-muscle characters or the story straight. Two young black boys have roles in the plot, and Mobley tackles Jim Crow laws and racial passing straightforwardly, although somewhat anachronistically. (Black strangers are more open and accepting of Bobby Lee than feels accurate.) This book should have done less with its plot and more with its heart; interesting avenues remain unexplored. (Historical fiction. 9-13)

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Starred review from September 15, 2017
Grades 4-7 *Starred Review* There's something promising about a book that opens with a map, and this one features the railway line running from New Orleans to Chicago in 1923. Boarding the train in New Orleans, 13-year-old Bobby Lee is fearful of being arrested for robbing the poor box of the Sisters of Charitable Mercy, who have raised him since his mother's death. While traveling, he befriends two African American boys, a jazz orchestra leader, and a kind, beautiful widow traveling with her infant son and several dubious companions. Cocky but disarmingly naive, Bobby Lee dabbles in petty theft and plans to engage in a life of crime, but he finds himself straying toward kindness, justice, and compassion. And just when everything goes wrong, an unlikely guardian angel sets them right again. Readers will see Jim Crow laws in action here, along with a bit of perspective offered in Bobby Lee's colorful narration and an appended author's note, which also comments on other period elements such as the Great Migration and Prohibition. Chock-full of well-imagined dialogue, the writing has a wonderfully cinematic quality. Mobley swiftly establishes vivid characters and settings and then lets the action unfold while surprising readers with plot twists along the way. A lively, well-researched historical novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2018
In 1923, thirteen-year-old Bobby Lee runs away from a New Orleans orphanage to catch a Chicago-bound train, hoping to become a gangster. Instead, he protects beautiful, widowed mother Nanette from criminals (and the cops). Jazz, mobsters, Jim Crow laws, and racial passing are woven into the not-quite-believable mystery surrounding Nanette, but Bobby Lee shines as a detective and a narrator.

(Copyright 2018 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)