By Eric Walters

Penguin Random House Canada
Paperback | 2003

It is 1915, and Canada is embroiled in the First World War. Most of the battles may be taking place across the ocean, but Halifax is an exciting place to be - its streets are crowded with sailors and soldiers and its harbour is giving temporary berth to warships. It is, perhaps, too exciting, decides William's mother. She has noticed that her thirteen-year-old son is hanging out with a rough crowd and has picked up some dangerous hobbies. What better way to distract the young man than to send him to quiet Baddeck, Nova Scotia, where she has managed to get him a summer job working on the estate of the famous scientist and inventor, Alexander Graham Bell? William is horrified by the idea of a summer spent working for some batty old man on a sleepy country estate. Until, that is, he discovers Bell is working on his own war effort - the development of a 'hydrofoil' boat that skims across the surface of the ocean and therefore avoids attacks from the deadly German submarines that are sinking ships all along Canada's coast. William wants nothing more than to work with Bell and the engineers on the boat, but why does everyone try to keep him away from the project? And what is everyone so afraid of? Before he knows it, William is caught up in a spine-tingling - and deadly - mystery that only he can solve.