Price, Charlie.
DEAD CONNECTION
Roaring Brook Press, 2006
IL YA
ISBN 978-1596431140

(3 booktalks)

He talks to the dead.
The dead talk to him.

Murray spends his free time in the local cemetery, which seems really creepy on the surface.  But Murray is lonely with few friends.  His only true friends are the voices he talks to in the cemetery.  One day he hears a new voice.  He can’t figure out where it’s coming from, but he knows what its saying, “Find me.  Help me.”  Dead Connection, the debut novel by Charlie Price, a page-turning suspense novel that you won’t want to put down.  (Georgia Peach Book Award for Teen Readers, 2007-2008)

Booktalk #2

“They are not graveyards. I hate it when people say that. They are cemeteries. That's where most of my friends are. I don't spend much time with the older people. The ones my age and the children, they almost all need someone to talk
to. I comfort them the best I can. They weren't ready. They'll tell you that.  They're not jealous or mean or scary like you might think. Just really lonely.
Everybody needs a friend.” 

Murray Kiefer is a loner.  His life at home is miserable.  School isn’t any better. 
So he hangs out where his friends are, the Forest Grove Cemetery. Yes, Murray talks to the dead, and they respond to him.  Blessed Daughter, Born 1966, tells him not to worry about school and all the teasing. She says he’s cool anyway. She says he'll grow out of it, but she died when she was eleven with a brain tumor, so Murray doesn’t think she's really an expert.  His best friend is Dearly Beloved. Dearly Beloved died in a car wreck after her date had too much to drink at a party. They hit a tree. He broke his neck. She went through the convertible's windshield and bled to death. He has several friends in the cemetery.  Some he has yet to talk to.  But one voice he hasn’t quite figured out yet.  It’s a girl’s.  She seems to be lost.  Could it be Nikki Parker, the missing high school cheerleader, who disappeared from the school parking lot after practice? 

In Dead Connection, author Charlie Price creates two very different individuals who are trying to discover the fate of a high school cheerleader who has disappeared.   Both are working independently of each other.  Deputy Sheriff Gates has his leads and his suspects, but Murray has the voice of Nikki Parker. Question is:  “Will Gates listen to a high school boy who communicates with the dead?”  Read Dead Connection, a thrilling who-did-it mystery.  (Mary M. Silgals, Trident Academy, for South Carolina Young Adult Book Awards, 2008-2009)

Booktalk #3

“They are not graveyards. I hate it when people say that. They are cemeteries. That's where most of my friends are. I don't spend much time with the older people. The ones my age and the children, they almost all need someone to talk to. I comfort them the best I can. They weren't ready. They'll tell you that. They're not jealous or mean or scary like you might think. Just really lonely. Everybody needs a friend.”
Is Murray a psychic? A medium? Weird? Well, his best (and only) friends are dead people. He escapes to the cemetery to avoid what’s going on at home and talks to the “residents” there and they talk back to him. Enter Pearl, cemetery caretaker’s protective daughter. What begins as an adversarial relationship evolves into a mystery as Murray and Pearl attempt to solve the disappearance of Nikki, a local cheerleader. Readers will be drawn in to the mystery told from different perspectives of the characters in the chapters, including the deputy who is out to get Murray. There’s never a dull moment when dead people are involved!  (Pennsylvania Young Reader’s Choice Awards nominee, 2008-2009)