Deer Island Mystery centres around three friends and a rumour of buried treasure on an island in the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick.

The main character Jamie, along with his two friends Jennifer and Ian, get caught up in a mystery during research on a school heritage project. Jamie had chosen to present a project on Captain Nehemiah Butler, a prominent person who lived on Deer Island back in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Like everyone who lives on Deer Island, Jamie has heard the rumours that Captain Butler may have buried his fortune on Deer Island. Butler is rumoured to have had a distrust for banks and everyone knew he was a rich man, so what happened to his fortune when he died? Many have looked for the treasure but no one has ever discovered it. The three friends stumble upon a piece of paper hidden in an old family Bible owned by Butler and this clue might be the missing link that could solve the mystery surrounding the buried treasure.

Solving the mystery means the friends have to work together using their deductive and orienteering skills to interpret the clues they find. It also means they have to depend on each other and trust their instincts. But there are others also looking for the treasure and when an important clue goes missing, the three friends are in a race to solve the mystery and find the treasure before anyone else.

Don Kelly has drawn on his years as an elementary school teacher as well as his orienteering skills to provide a captivating mystery for young readers. Woven into the story are facts about some of the founding families of the island, well known landmarks that are easily recognized by anyone visiting and the use of orienteering skills, as well as information about semaphore (the use of flags to send messages).

Kelly and Chocolate River Publishing also provide the reader with a website link where they can download a semaphore clue sheet so the reader can try and decode one of the semaphore clues found by the three friends. A semaphore key sheet for the clue can be found in the book to help with decoding the clue.

This is a great read for anyone ages 9-12 who likes mysteries.

Deer Island Mystery
Don Kelly
Chocolate River Publishing