The narration of teen Cyril MacIntyre in the comic legal thriller Quid Pro Quo has the kind of timing, pacing, deadpan one-liners, and punchy humour that a seasoned stand-up comic would envy. No wonder that Halifax author Vicki Grant earned a Gemini for writing her preschool comedy series, Scoop & Doozie, and praise for her debut children’s novel, The Puppet Wrangler.

Cyril’s irreverent observations and school-of-hard-knocks philosophy are born of being the outsider in every way you can imagine. His smart mouth and attitude are his survival techniques, as we learn in his David Copperfield-style introduction. He lives with his 28-year-old single mother, Andy (as he says dryly, “you do the math”), who has a chip the size of a continent on her shoulders. A former street kid, she’s gotten her life together, having just graduated from law school. But his mother isn’t the only one who’s received a legal education, because Cyril accompanied her to her night school classes. Cyril’s sly running commentary – on everything from his less-than-stellar appearance (“built like a chihuahua”) to the clientele of the lawyer for whom his mother is articling and he’s working part-time – is worth the price of admission alone.
Life seems to be going almost smoothly until a ghost from Andy’s past, an ex-con with a stump for a hand, shows up, demanding her help. When Andy and the ex-con go missing, Cyril desperately turns into a crafty amateur detective, using his legal knowhow to track down his mom.

The suspenseful story plays out with the broad comedy of a sitcom with a social conscience; its cast of characters and their messy relationships are both real and funny. Young teen readers of both sexes will receive their own legal education of sorts in Grant’s clever use of legal terms for chapter headings, which are entertainingly illustrated by the action and intrepreted in case study style by Cyril.