When a teenager is kidnapped and then mysteriously released, he and his best friend are determined to figure out why.
The first Hunter & Holmes Mystery quickly introduces us to its two young protagonists—straight-laced, methodical Jason Hunter and impulsive, emotional Daniel Holmes—and gets right down to business: Jason has been kidnapped, and as his parents, Daniel and his other friends slowly realize this, they contact the police and wait nervously for some progress. It comes quickly; after only a few dozen tense and well-orchestrated pages, Jason is released. He’s physically unharmed, but an angry Daniel sees that his friend’s confident personality has changed, and at Daniel’s urging, the two teens decide to solve the mystery of why Jason was kidnapped in the first place. There follows the benign clue-hunting and adult-outwitting (and two further kidnappings) that will be familiar to fans of the hobby-investigator sub-genre, all of it brightly illustrated with dozens of richly colored, manga-inspired drawings by Ricardo Carmona. The plot moves forward smoothly, and although the characters—especially the adults—speak and behave in often hilariously wooden ways, the author deploys just enough red herrings to keep even alert readers guessing until almost the last page. The mystery of Jason’s kidnapping is solved in due course, but this book has other mysteries, perhaps not so easily unraveled. Our young protagonists wear Converse All-Star “Chuck Taylor” shoes, for instance (they feature prominently in Carmona’s illustrations), and when a police detective notices this fact, he says, “I had a pair of chucks when I was your age…I see they are still considered cool today.” This book and its sequels are produced by The ChucksConnection, a subdivision of Hal Peterson Media Services, whose aim is to promote the “chucks club culture” (forceful Jason, for instance, always wears red high-top chucks, whereas rock-star rebel Daniel always wears black high-top chucks). Subtle product placement is still product placement, and that may lead some readers to wonder whether this is a mystery novel or an extended shoe commercial. Younger readers may enjoy the book’s combination of action and deduction—they’ll certainly finish it wanting a pair of Chuck Taylors, in either red or black.
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2008
ISBN: 978-0982101421
Page Count: 214
Publisher: Hal Peterson Media Services
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Aspiring filmmaker/first-novelist Chbosky adds an upbeat ending to a tale of teenaged angst—the right combination of realism and uplift to allow it on high school reading lists, though some might object to the sexuality, drinking, and dope-smoking. More sophisticated readers might object to the rip-off of Salinger, though Chbosky pays homage by having his protagonist read Catcher in the Rye. Like Holden, Charlie oozes sincerity, rails against celebrity phoniness, and feels an extraliterary bond with his favorite writers (Harper Lee, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Ayn Rand, etc.). But Charlie’s no rich kid: the third child in a middle-class family, he attends public school in western Pennsylvania, has an older brother who plays football at Penn State, and an older sister who worries about boys a lot. An epistolary novel addressed to an anonymous “friend,” Charlie’s letters cover his first year in high school, a time haunted by the recent suicide of his best friend. Always quick to shed tears, Charlie also feels guilty about the death of his Aunt Helen, a troubled woman who lived with Charlie’s family at the time of her fatal car wreck. Though he begins as a friendless observer, Charlie is soon pals with seniors Patrick and Sam (for Samantha), stepsiblings who include Charlie in their circle, where he smokes pot for the first time, drops acid, and falls madly in love with the inaccessible Sam. His first relationship ends miserably because Charlie remains compulsively honest, though he proves a loyal friend (to Patrick when he’s gay-bashed) and brother (when his sister needs an abortion). Depressed when all his friends prepare for college, Charlie has a catatonic breakdown, which resolves itself neatly and reveals a long-repressed truth about Aunt Helen. A plain-written narrative suggesting that passivity, and thinking too much, lead to confusion and anxiety. Perhaps the folks at (co-publisher) MTV see the synergy here with Daria or any number of videos by the sensitive singer-songwriters they feature.
Pub Date: Feb. 4, 1999
ISBN: 0-671-02734-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: MTV Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
