Review – The Trouble With Max

Patricia Rushford, Oregon writer, conference director, and Edgar Award Nominee from Mystery Writers of America, released three new titles for middle-grade readers this summer. The mystery series is set in the Washington Cascade Mountains where readers meet twelve-year-old Jessie Miller, who is recuperating from leukemia treatments, and her new girlfriend and pal, twelve-year-old Max Hunter.

Max, new to the neighborhood, meets Jessie at Chenoa Lake School. Jessie, homeschooled until this year, is in remission, and for the first time has the strength and energy to attend public school. The girls become unlikely best friends and do everything together during and after school. Other kids dislike them. Jessie thinks it’s because they’re afraid they’ll catch cancer from her. She thinks they dislike Max because of her mischievous ways, spiked hair, and Goth style dress. Jessie and Max also share a major difference-Jessie comes from a good home, Max does not.

Jessie’s parents are concerned for her and take good care of her. But Max doesn’t live with her biological parents, she does live with abusive foster parents, who use and deal drugs. Max keeps her dangerous secret well hidden, but Jessie knows Max is in trouble. When she confronts her with the truth, the mystery begins.

Book one, The Trouble with Max, introduces Rushford’s new series and Jessie and Max’s unlikely friendship. This book highlights relationships, coping with illness, the embarrassment of hair loss, and how some children suffer from abuse.

Book Two, Danger at Lakeside Farm, continues the story with Max in foster care, spooky noises, a forgotten gold mine, missing money, murder, and Max’s disappearance.

Book Three, The Secrets of Ghost Island, is a story of orphan children, possible deportation, ghosts, murder, cougars, snakes, and burglaries. Classmate Cooper Smalley joins the story line to hunt for his missing best friend, Enrique.

Rushford draws on experiences as a mother, years of youth counseling and pediatric nursing, and her own familiarity with cancer to craft a well-told mystery series with which children can identify. This series will keep her existing fans entertained and win new ones for Rushford.