Last Flight of the Birdman (1912: The Mackenzie Davis files)

All Mack Davis wants to do is go to the 1912 Exhibition in Saskatoon and watch that aerial daredevil the Birdman. But on the way he and his Chinese friend Jin are grabbed by a gang of burglars. It's summer, 1912, and all of Saskatoon is excited about the Exhibition coming to town, complete with a Wild West show, and horses jumping from thirty-foot-high ramps into tanks full of water. But the show Mackenzie wants to see is Glenn Martin, the "barnstorming" airplane pilot known as the Birdman, doing his mid-air stunts. Maybe some day, Mack thinks, he'll be a flyer himself. First, however, he has a mystery to unravel. Something doesn't quite add up about the very inquisitive shoeshine men at Mr. Brittner's second-hand store. Mack and his Chinese friend Jin wind up locked in the basement for their sleuthing, and the criminals flee town with their loot. The only consolation is that Mack manages to save a silver model of the Birdman's plane that the thieves stole, and to return it to his hero. As a reward, Mack gets a flight with the Birdman, and from the air, he spots the culprits stashing their ill-gotten gains just outside of town. With the help of a father and son pair of horseback riders from the Whitecap reserve, they catch the miserable band of thieves. But there's one more mystery, and Mack Davis has missed all the clues. There is much more to his friend Jin than he knows, and he's in for the surprise of his life! Fast-paced, full of humour and authentic historical details about the early days of a prairie city, Last Flight of the Birdman will take you on a thrilling fictional ride.