A wholesome tale featuring a beloved teen sleuth.
Goldie thought the most exciting part of her day off from the Crossed Palms Resort, where she lives and works as a car valet and aspiring house detective, would be her date with longtime crush Diane—until props start going missing from various workshops at the League of Magical Arts Convention. To top it off, Derek, the extremely annoying, mansplaining son of the headlining magician, Dr. Von Thurston, is trying to horn in on the case. Now, Goldie must help her mentor, Walter Tooey, solve the Case of the Missing Props before the uber-famous Dr. Von Thurston refuses to take the stage, leaving the Florida resort with a tarnished reputation. Through each twist and turn, Goldie has to stay one step ahead of Derek and the troublemaker behind the thefts while also trying to make it the best date Diane has ever had. This neat, straightforward, first-person mystery includes a sweet portrayal of a queer romance and will appeal to genre fans of many ages. The language manages to feel modern while evoking vintage classics. Inspired by the Goldie Vance comic book series, this entry includes several pages of full-color illustrations. Goldie is brown skinned.
A wholesome tale featuring a beloved teen sleuth. (Mystery. 11-16)Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-316-42759-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
Inventive worldbuilding, but way too much is left unexplained and unresolved.
Four children find their way into another world through a hidden doorway in a mysterious old piece of furniture.
Gallagher elaborates on this oddly familiar premise by (eventually) explaining that the right sort of wooden joinery will link furniture from any place or time. Billy, his little sister Sophie and their friends Chris and Maggie discover a seemingly endless maze of hallways lined with doors and drawers full of strange artifacts by crawling into a nightstand belonging to missing Uncle Gary. The labyrinth is actually a “cabinet of curiosities” that brilliant carpenters of many generations have been building to store treasures like Excalibur and the Thunderbird Photograph. Before this is explained, however, the four children have spent many chapters wandering the halls at random—and also being menaced in the outside world by animated wooden puppets from the fictional “Zobadak Wood Company,” who are after Uncle Gary and the nightstand at the command of a shadowy figure named Brope. Along with introducing scads of enigmatic elements from flocks of aggressive crows to a mischievous fairy, the author injects artificial melodrama into the tale by having Billy and Sophie rescue their pointlessly kidnapped parents. He clumsily tries for comic relief by casting the puppets as inept Abbott-and-Costello types and with no perceptible rationale closes by having all of the adults stonewall or downplay everything that has happened.
Inventive worldbuilding, but way too much is left unexplained and unresolved. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: July 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-934133-32-3
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2011
Occasional jokey dialogue won’t be enough to carry readers over a story riddled with logical gaps, extraneous characters,...
A frenetic dash across Europe that leads both to hidden treasure and the resolution of a 1,600-year-old mystery brings Newsome’s once-promising trilogy to a muddled, heavily contrived close.
Framed for the (supposed) murder of archenemy Sir Mason Green, jumped-up preteen billionaire Gerald Wilkins and his twin sidekicks Sam and Ruby are on the run. They repeatedly escape police and a beautiful poisoner while following a trail of baroque clues that take the three from an ossuary deep within Mont Saint-Michel to Grecian Delphi. This, improbably, turns out to have been secretly roofed over beneath fake ruins centuries ago to protect its fabled treasures and still-functional oracle. Newsome seems far more intent on chivvying his characters along than in setting any credible challenges for them. He pitches the trio through one chase scene or rescue after another, giving them easy access everywhere by leading them directly to a series of conveniently discovered open doors and cave entrances. All is revealed in a climactic subterranean faceoff during which the (surprise, surprise) still-living Green explains his nefarious purposes in great detail, before Gerald knocks him unconscious and expedites the death of his pet assassin.
Occasional jokey dialogue won’t be enough to carry readers over a story riddled with logical gaps, extraneous characters, massive coincidences and laboriously fabricated suspense. Illustrations not seen. (Adventure. 11-14)Pub Date: May 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-194494-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2012
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