Lord Of The Kill
Grade 6-9-In an adventure-packed novel similar to Sniper (Avon, 1991), 16-year-old Ben Jepson once again finds himself in charge of the family wild cat sanctuary, Los Coyotes Preserve, while his parents are in a remote part of India. Ben discovers a body in the jaguars' cage. Who put her there? Was the young woman dead before the cats mauled her? Then his favorite cat, an 800-pound Siberian tiger nicknamed Lord of the Kill, is kidnapped and held for ransom. Ben's father has made many enemies in his various crusades to free caged Chinese moon bears, whose stomach bile is harvested to sell as medicine; to stop the killing of tigers whose body parts are used in ancient "tiger medicine"; and to eliminate canned hunts in which zoos sell surplus exotic animals that end up at ranches where hunters kill them at close range for sport. Any of these enemies could be responsible for the woman's death and the tiger's disappearance. Taylor's story is securely grounded in Orange County, CA, and could be right out of the headlines with its exposure of Chinese Triad gangs and the United Sportsmen organization. Although the foreshadowing is heavy-handed, and readers get to know more about the wild cats and their behavior than they do about the human characters, teens will nevertheless find themselves absorbed in the author's animal-rights agenda and will be rooting for Ben as he struggles with fears for his parents' safety and his own.Ellen Fader, Multnomah County Library, Portland, ORCopyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.