Sisters with supernatural gifts investigate suspiciousarchaeological operations in the series-opening mystery novel The Fireon Slate Fell.In Warren Cabral’s quirky mystery novel The Fire onSlate Fell, telepathic sisters unravel a conspiracy that involves ancienttreasures, false fires, and kidnappings.Isla and Mae are far from ordinary. They share a rareperceptiveness and inquisitive streak. Isla draws all that she sees, and Maeuses quixotic rhymes to memorize clues and complex events. They also have thesupernatural ability to share experiences and send telepathic messages overlong distances, making them a powerful detective team.In this series entry, the sisters connect a superlongsupermarket receipt, a stranger asking for directions in a white van, smokelessfires, and a teacher’s lesson on ruins buried in the area. All are evidence ofa plot to steal buried artifacts across England from local landowners.Though this is the first entry in the series, thecharacters’ backstories are absent, as are details related to the sisters’telepathic abilities; their thoughts about their special powers are unclear,and they seem to take them for granted. At the same time, their powers arebaffling to their parents and others, who behave as though they have nevernoticed the girls’ abilities before. Some scenes are disjointed as a result.The story’s smooth prose, which makes ample use of dialogue,creates a sense of fluidity in complex scenes, as when the sisters communicatevia telepathy while eavesdropping on their parents’ conversations, or when theytry to piece together nuggets of information to solve the mystery. Theintricacy of the plot, and the girls’ attention to the mechanics of unravelingthe mystery, as when Mae uses a clever metaphor of pirates setting fires at seato understand fires they’re seeing in the nearby park, is satisfying.The setting is developed in terms of small communityinteractions. Everyone in the cast contributes to the plot, including thegirls’ father; his team of volunteers, the Fell’s Angels, motorcyclists whowork in Slate Fell Park and have firebug proclivities; and the representativeof a local museum, Daphne. Many come from different walks of life, fleshing outthe local society in a vivid manner. As the sisters investigate, people fromthese different interest groups make the repercussions of meddling in a wide-rangingscheme feel tangible.However, the story is slow to establish its stakes. For thefirst several chapters, the attention that Isla and Mae place on mundaneobjects like trash at the supermarket and the recurring presence of certainpeople in photographs from archaeological digs is unexplained. Still, as fires,kidnappings, and dangers related to their sleuthing pile up, their concerns arevalidated.The book’s watercolor illustrations have a rudimentaryquality. While leaning into bright reds, browns, greens, and pinks, they depictpeople’s facial expressions in a way that is often hard to read and evaluate.Further, some appear on back-to-back pages, and others appear five or morepages apart, making their inclusion feel sometimes haphazard.In the playful mystery novel The Fire on Slate Fell,telepathic sisters take on adult forces in their small English town.Reviewed for Foreword Clarion by WillemMarxNovember 2, 2025"...an entertaining read for mystery loving middle grade readers." LoveReading4Kids
