A sure pleaser for Cam Jansen grads or anyone fond of knotty, lightweight capers solved with brainpower (and a little luck).
A photographic memory and a best bud with OCD help a young sleuth nab a gang of art thieves in this effervescent debut.
The pressure’s on: With his librarian father laid off, it looks like 11-year-old Edmund will have to transfer out of his exclusive prep school—until he leverages his spectacular memory and eye for detail into a part-time police gig staking out New York art museums threatened by the mysterious Picasso Gang in exchange for tuition. But not only is his relationship with crusty veteran Detective Frank Bovano, “a tough loaf of old and angry Italian bread,” on the rocks (particularly after the Taser incident), but the department is about to close the whole investigation down for lack of progress. Eddie Red is a smart, likable narrator with credible thought processes and an impulsive streak that drives the safety-minded adults around him crazy. Though the New York setting is sketchy at best, Wells outfits her voluble narrator with a lively supporting cast led by his close if relentlessly hyper friend Jonah, who comes up with the breakthrough insight, and a fluent plotline that leads to a bullets-flying climax. Calo provides accomplished, lightly caricatured portraits of all the main characters, plus a quick course in drawing faces at the end.
A sure pleaser for Cam Jansen grads or anyone fond of knotty, lightweight capers solved with brainpower (and a little luck). (Mystery. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-23833-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Flimsily entertaining
An American schoolgirl in a British boarding school battles a secret society in this adventure.
In this trope-y sequel to The Mystery of Black Hollow Lane (2019), the students at Wellsworth must stay safe from the evil order that’s been there for generations and still entangles their parents. Emmy, a white, well-to-do Connecticut 12-year-old, is determined to return to Wellsworth even though last year she was nearly killed. The Order of Black Hollow Lane, the mysterious bad guys who are disguised as the school’s Latin Society, want something from Emmy. Her long-lost father, for one, and Emmy’s box of medallions, for another. Why? Do they really need a reason aside from being an evil club full of wickedness determined to find a whole box of MacGuffins that will somehow make them even richer and more powerful or at least propel the plot? In any case the dastardly fiends plague Emmy, framing one of her best friends for theft and leaving cryptic notes and computer files to threaten the lives of Emmy’s loved ones. Though the Order has infiltrated this (nearly all-white, wealthy) school for generations, Emmy must somehow defeat them and save her dad. The quest is peppered with spy-thriller moments that are mostly only thinly sketched and go nowhere, though some (such as a disguise right out of Scooby Doo cartoons) are funny enough to keep the action moving.
Flimsily entertaining . (Adventure. 9-11)Pub Date: March 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4926-6467-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Sourcebooks Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
Comical and clever in spots but overall, a sad follow-up to Mystery on Museum Mile (2014).
A free trip to the Yucatán pitches Edmund, a young artist/sleuth with a photographic memory, and his OCD pal Jonah into a new investigation involving an unsolved old crime and disappearing gold.
Edmund opens his account sitting in a jail cell, clad in a wet Darth Vader costume, covered in scratches, blood and barf (“I smell awesome”), his wrist in a cast—and really not looking forward to calling his parents. Following this magnificent lead-in, though, the tale goes downhill rapidly, from the disappearance of an ancient gold mask to the climactic struggle with a knife-wielding thief atop a rain-swept Mayan ruin. In between, Wells concocts a nonsensically contrived caper involving Hebrew orthography, poorly integrated “evidence” from false fingerprints to glimpses of the bad guy dressed as a museum guard, and an obvious, no-brainer clue to where the gold is hidden that has somehow gone misunderstood for decades. Moreover, even less-reflective readers will wonder how Edmund and Jonah can break into an apartment and bend various other laws in the course of their investigation without suffering any legal consequences. Along the way, Jonah’s practice of smearing a gift-store Mayan effigy with peanut-butter and blood “sacrifices” comes off more like cultural mockery than harmless fooling. Calo’s accomplished drawings bring characters and details to life but are both rare and, sometimes, too finished to believably represent Edmund’s quick sketches.
Comical and clever in spots but overall, a sad follow-up to Mystery on Museum Mile (2014). (appendix of Mayan gods) (Mystery. 9-11)Pub Date: April 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-544-30206-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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