The Blue Helmet
by William Bell
Reviewed by What If? Staff

Lee Mercer lost his mom to cancer when he was young, and his dad to the two jobs he must work to pay off the bills. After a violent encounter with a schoolyard bully, Lee has grown up thinking that violence is the only solution to any confrontation. Now he is in trouble with the police after getting caught on a break and enter; part of his initiation into a street gang. Fortunately, although it doesn't seem that way to Lee at the time, one of the cops knows his dad. Rather than face the legal system the cop takes him home to
his dad and from there he is exiled to New Toronto to live with his aunt Reena.

Reena owns Reena's Unique Café which has a rather eclectic bunch of customers including homeless people from the neighbourhood that Reena allows in for coffee and muffins. She buys a bicycle for Lee and before long he's running his own courier service and meeting more neighbours. One of his customers, Bruce Cutter, has mental health issues (he hangs disks in the windows to deflect mind-controlling radio-waves) but he and Lee become good friends.

When Bruce commits suicide and leaves Lee his house and computer game fortune, Lee embarks on an investigation of Bruce's life. In the process he discovers the true cost and futility of violence.

William Bell's The Blue Helmet, in true Bell style, is short and to the point. In 166 pages he explores the journey one young man takes to discover meaning and the importance of family in his life, and also weaves in historical detail of Canada's peacekeeping mission in Serbia/Croatia. The novel clearly and effectively condemns violence. Using fictional, but mind-numbing scenes of genocide, Bell leaves no doubt about the source of Bruce Cutter's agony. Lee's personal outbursts of uncontrollable anger
are deftly woven into the story, along with his struggle to change as he discovers that this was what ultimately cost Bruce his life. Bell shows why he is an award-winning young adult novelist as he creates a novel at first dark and foreboding but gradually lightening into a story of hope. Will Lee conquer his personal demons? Reading The Blue Helmet is a journey of discovery that is well worth your time. You just might be reading another Bell classic destined to be used in high school English courses for as long as Crabbe has been.

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