The Fire on Slate Fell

Sisters with supernatural gifts investigate suspicious archaeological operations in the series-opening mystery novel The Fire on Slate Fell.

In Warren Cabral’s quirky mystery novel The Fire on Slate Fell, telepathic sisters unravel a conspiracy that involves ancient treasures, false fires, and kidnappings.

Isla and Mae are far from ordinary. They share a rare perceptiveness and inquisitive streak. Isla draws all that she sees, and Mae uses quixotic rhymes to memorize clues and complex events. They also have the supernatural ability to share experiences and send telepathic messages over long distances, making them a powerful detective team.

In this series entry, the sisters connect a superlong supermarket receipt, a stranger asking for directions in a white van, smokeless fires, and a teacher’s lesson on ruins buried in the area. All are evidence of a plot to steal buried artifacts across England from local landowners.

Though this is the first entry in the series, the characters’ backstories are absent, as are details related to the sisters’ telepathic abilities; their thoughts about their special powers are unclear, and they seem to take them for granted. At the same time, their powers are baffling to their parents and others, who behave as though they have never noticed the girls’ abilities before. Some scenes are disjointed as a result.

The story’s smooth prose, which makes ample use of dialogue, creates a sense of fluidity in complex scenes, as when the sisters communicate via telepathy while eavesdropping on their parents’ conversations, or when they try to piece together nuggets of information to solve the mystery. The intricacy of the plot, and the girls’ attention to the mechanics of unraveling the mystery, as when Mae uses a clever metaphor of pirates setting fires at sea to understand fires they’re seeing in the nearby park, is satisfying.

The setting is developed in terms of small community interactions. Everyone in the cast contributes to the plot, including the girls’ father; his team of volunteers, the Fell’s Angels, motorcyclists who work in Slate Fell Park and have firebug proclivities; and the representative of a local museum, Daphne. Many come from different walks of life, fleshing out the local society in a vivid manner. As the sisters investigate, people from these different interest groups make the repercussions of meddling in a wide-ranging scheme feel tangible.

However, the story is slow to establish its stakes. For the first several chapters, the attention that Isla and Mae place on mundane objects like trash at the supermarket and the recurring presence of certain people in photographs from archaeological digs is unexplained. Still, as fires, kidnappings, and dangers related to their sleuthing pile up, their concerns are validated.

The book’s watercolor illustrations have a rudimentary quality. While leaning into bright reds, browns, greens, and pinks, they depict people’s facial expressions in a way that is often hard to read and evaluate. Further, some appear on back-to-back pages, and others appear five or more pages apart, making their inclusion feel sometimes haphazard.

In the playful mystery novel The Fire on Slate Fell, telepathic sisters take on adult forces in their small English town.

Reviewed for Foreword Clarion by Willem Marx
November 2, 2025

"...an entertaining read for mystery loving middle grade readers." LoveReading4Kids