posted on 20 Nov 2017

Defenders: Pitch Invasion by Tom Palmer

Tom Palmer’s Defenders trilogy comes to a conclusion with Pitch Invasion and for those of you who haven’t encountered its hero, Seth, before now it might be worth giving you a quick bit of background.

Seth’s life is complicated: you might think that his undying love for Halifax Town football club makes him pretty unusual but there’s more, much more. He can see the past – he’s inherited the ability of his dead father to see historical events happening around him, events that happened way back in the past where traumatic events took place. With the help of his best school friend, Nadiya, who does all the historical research, he’s discovered he can help those troubled souls from the past. Together Seth and Nadiya are the ‘defenders’.

Seth’s got another worry on his mind – his mom’s health. She’s expecting a final verdict on her cancer treatment and waiting for the all clear is driving them both mad. In this final instalment Seth and his mother decide to fill the waiting time by going on a short holiday to Cornwall, where she and Seth’s dad had been on holiday before.

The town they’re heading for is also the site of what had been an Iron Age hill fort and Seth immediately starts to get visions of the past and ‘sees’ the movements of many people seemingly heading for the location of the fort. Who are these ragged, ill-clad travellers? Nadiya has a theory – it’s possible they were refugees fleeing the Roman invasion and looking for sanctuary.

All well and good but Seth’s also seen something he’s not telling the others about – something that’s scared him out of his wits. The perimeters of the hill fort are providing a ghastly welcoming image – five heads impaled on stakes and slowly rotting away.

When Seth encounters two young unaccompanied asylum seeking young boys from Syria who have endured their own journey of terror to get to Britain he realises two things that change everything – the boys can also see the heads and that he, Seth, has got to do something.

So how will it all play out? Will Seth be able to free the Syrian boys from the visions of the gruesome severed heads? Will his mom get good news? How will Halifax do in their next match? Well, you’ll have to read it to find out.

This is an exciting story with a nicely judged frisson of the macabre to give the story some page-turning power. But behind the history and the supernatural there’s also the story of Seth’s friendship with Nadiya; a sensitive examination of how a young boy deals with his mother’s illness; and, a lesson about racism and the need to show empathy and understanding for the outsider or the other.

The trilogy is at an end but we’ll all be watching out for what comes next from the imagination of Tom Palmer – I’m guessing history and football will be involved somewhere.

 

Terry Potter

November 2017