Vancouver Nightmare

Introduction: A chance meeting with a drug dealer named Spider takes Tom Austen into the grim streets of Vancouver's Skid Road, where he poses as a runaway while searching for information to help the police smash a gang that is hooking young kids on drugs. Suddenly unmasked as a police agent, Tom is trapped in the nightmarish underworld of Vancouver as the gang closes in, determined to get rid of the young meddler at any cost. The coffin was open, the air black and musty all around. Who could resist a mystery begun in such a fashion? This fast-paced tale of drug smuggling and deceit will be an instant success. Eric Wilson novels excite the imagination of young readers in grades 4 - 8. Appealing to children's inherent keen interest in mystery, Eric Wilson has skilfully woven accurate Canadian geographic and historic information into his writing. He also touches on current social and political issues in many of his novels. As such, these novels lend themselves to the integrated study of the mystery genre with Canadian geography topics in social studies and investigation units in science. Vancouver Nightmare provides rich material for the study of setting, characterization and plot development. It can be used independently or as an introduction to the other novels in the series, thereby providing a national setting within which the regional stories come together to make a whole. The varying levels of difficulty in the novels provide opportunity to accomodate individual student ability, experience and interests. Vancouver Nightmare is one of the shorter, easier to read novels in the series. Students can supplement the package with meaningful research which will strengthen the impact of their work. They will take great delight in finding information on the Internet that directly links to the places or events in the novels. Every province, territory and most cities have up-to-date information available on an Internet website. An interesting research topic might be ancient Chinese medicine. This novel could be easily integrated into the health curriculum in the area of drug awareness.