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THE GREAT MEDITERRANEAN CHEESE HEIST

Name: THE GREAT MEDITERRANEAN CHEESE HEIST
Author: Lara Malmqvist
ISBN: 978-1-5255-3272-6

A JACOB WHEELER MYSTERY

by Lara Malmqvist ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

An uneven kid-detective tale with an appealing setting.

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In this middle-grade novel, a boy helps his grandfather solve a mystery involving stolen Italian cheeses while on a cruise.

It’s the first day of summer vacation, and 12-year-old Jake Wheeler has plans to ride his new bike at the BMX course. But it turns out that he’ll have to wait, because Jake’s grandfather, “a world-renowned detective,” has to work on a case involving cheese theft for the Italian police. He can’t accompany Jake’s grandmother on their Mediterranean trip, so Jake’s mother volunteers the boy as a traveling companion. After leaving Montreal, Jake and his grandma sail on the cruise ship Canberra, due to stop in “Spain, Israel, Cyprus, Greece, and Gibraltar.” Also on the trip is his second cousin Millie, a know-it-all English girl with a titled father. Jake must admit that the ship and his room are cool even if Millie is annoying and Granny limits his smartphone “screen time.” However, Jake finds real excitement when he stumbles onto clues related to his grandfather’s case. After Grandpa learns that there’s stolen cheese aboard ship (from Granny’s photo of a wine-and-cheese event), he thrills Jake by asking him to help him investigate: “keep your eyes and ears open.” While playing tourist at beautiful locations, Jake, with Millie’s help, tracks down clues and tries to avoid bad guys. In her often humorous series starter, debut author Malmqvist depends too much on coincidences; it’s hard to believe that Grandpa’s stolen-cheese investigation happens to intersect perfectly with Jake’s vacation. The young sleuth also conveniently chances upon the most important clues; for example, he just happens to see an important crate being delivered, is woken by a voice beneath his window, and spots a cellphone on a cheese table. Granny’s characterization also falters; she’s said to be “quirky” and has bright-pink streaks in her silver hair, but she often acts as a wet blanket, presumably to introduce plot obstacles. Nevertheless, Jake is intelligent, bold, and resourceful, and the Mediterranean ports of call make an engaging backdrop for the mystery.

An uneven kid-detective tale with an appealing setting.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: 978-1-5255-3272-6

Page Count: 183

Publisher: FriesenPress

Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.