The Colour of Bee Larkham’s Murder, by Sarah J Harris

Jasper doesn’t recognise faces and sees sounds as colours, just like his Mum did before she died of cancer and left him alone with his Dad. The 13-year-old likes to paint the colours he hears, especially the noise of the parakeets in the tree in his neighbour’s garden. He makes friends with his colourful neighbour, Bee Larkham, who seems to get him a bit more than others in the street, the kids at school, or his Dad. But there is a darker shade to Bee and when she goes missing Jasper thinks it’s his fault. As he desperately tries to paint the true colours of what happened a very strange tale unfolds. The story is reminiscent of the Curious Case of the Dog in the Nighttime, its young hero with mental challenges finding himself at the centre of a crime. It would be difficult to write a murder mystery from the POV of a teenage boy with ‘learning difficulties’ and this attempt is not entirely successful. The back and forth between the present, the past and Jasper’s clouded memories of the night Bee disappeared is occasionally confusing and sometimes tedious until the action steps up towards the end. Harris engenders great sympathy for the boy who believes he has killed someone and has trouble communicating with the world. Is Dad a villain? Is the neighbour across the road? In the end all is resolved a little too neatly, but it is an interesting look at childhood trauma and its consequences.