Eugene Richards is rightly disturbed when a specter inhabits his body and tells him he must kill his grandfather to redress a wrong from many years ago. The specter has already forced Sonny’s dad to walk off a platform and plunge to his death, and Sam’s father to crash his car into a tree. An oil swindle, a lynching and a small town’s coverup of a murder involving several of their own make for a spooky Depression-era mystery. Another layer to the tale is provided by a well-developed friendship among the three young protagonists, who learn to come together and find value in one another despite of their differences. The first-person narrative, fast-paced prose and careful plotting make this a satisfying page-turner. A good match with Sid Fleischman’s The Entertainer and the Dybbuk (2007). (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59990-220-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2008
Written in workhorse prose, it’s an amiable enough read.
The prolific king of the beach read is back with an intergenerational mystery for the 9-to-12-year-old set.
Ali Cross, the son of Patterson’s most famous creation, African American homicide detective Alex Cross, is “starting to think the worst might have happened” to his mixed-race friend Gabriel “Gabe” Qualls, who disappeared on Dec. 21 and hasn’t been heard from as of Christmas Eve, when the book opens. Ali offers an impromptu prayer for Gabe at the pre-holiday service at his all-black church as well as an impromptu press conference outside of it as journalists and paparazzi confront Alex about his alleged coma-inducing assault of a murder suspect’s father. Then someone robs the Crosses’ home that night along with four other homes; the Crosses’ Christmas gifts are stolen. Ali, obsessed with finding Gabe and feeling that these events will distract his dad and the police from searching for him, starts his own investigation—complete with looking at some contraband footage of Gabe’s unusually loaded backpack obtained by Ali’s stepmother, also a cop—and questioning his school and gaming pals, a diverse group. Writing in Ali’s voice with occasional cutaways to third-person chapters that follow Alex, Patterson sprinkles the narrative with pop-culture references even as he takes readers through the detective process.
Written in workhorse prose, it’s an amiable enough read. (Mystery. 9-12)Pub Date: Nov. 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-53041-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
Anderson’s mind is a very strange place, and this almost indescribable wackiness is further proof. In a grand send-up of all that is series books, it echoes Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys and those with cliffhanger chapter endings; references Godzilla movies and offspring; talks to, at and around the reader and is generally awfully funny (and we do mean awfully). Our heroine is ten-year old Lily, whose dad works in an abandoned warehouse making stilts for whales. His boss, Larry, seems to be blue and kind of whale-like, although he has a lot in common with Dilbert’s boss, too. It’s pretty obvious that there’s a nefarious plan at work, so Lily enlists her two best friends, Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut, and Katie Mulligan of Horror Hollow, who, like Jasper, already has a book series chronicling her adventures. The three figure out that the whales are about to take over the world, and they save it amid many explosions, catastrophes and asides from the author. Promises—or threatens—to be a series of its own. It doesn’t get any better than this. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: April 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-15-205340-9
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
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