Catch You Later, Traitor
Award-winning children’s author Avi turns his attention to 1950s America in Catch You Later, Traitor, a story about the impact of the McCarthy era on one middle-class family in Brooklyn. The hero of the story, Pete, is singled out by his schoolteacher, who declares that Pete’s father is a communist. His teacher wants him ostracized and Pete’s classmates comply. Even his best friend, Kat, is forced to stay away from Pete by her anxious parents. With the FBI calling on him, Pete knows there is something behind the accusation, and as a faithful Sam Spade fan he makes it his business to find out the secrets of his father’s past.
This is an engaging story that evokes the paranoia of the times as well as wider issues of a young teen learning about his family. There are complex relationships portrayed: between Pete and his brother Bobby, and Pete’s father and his father’s uncle Chris. Pete is also lover of detective novels and Dashiell Hammett in particular. He likes to see the world through the eyes of Sam Spade, creating his own descriptions in Sam Spade’s voice, and trying to emulate his hero as he attempts to find out who has informed on his father and, worse, if his own father really is a secret communist.
With excellent period detail, humor and emotional depth, Catch You Later, Traitor is an enjoyable novel for middle-grade readers as well as an effective, accessible introduction to a complex political period in American history.
