An intriguing mystery that fails to deliver on its promise.
When David McLean dies, leaving behind a notebook filled with code, a dozen different passports and a trail of mysterious clues, his seven grandsons follow seven different paths to try and figure out exactly who their grandfather was.
It falls to Rennie Charbonneau to investigate Klaus Adler, one of his grandfather’s aliases. Other than a fake Argentinian passport, an old newspaper clipping featuring a photo of three Nazis and a hand-drawn map, Rennie has little to go on. But he is determined to find out whether his grandfather was a spy, as his cousins assume, or a Nazi—as they fear. The paltry trail of clues takes him to inner-city Detroit, where he quickly becomes entangled with an old man obsessed with Nazis and his dysfunctional family. If Rennie can keep from getting himself killed or thrown in jail, he might be able to solve a mystery that will free more than just his own family from the past. While the premise is intriguing, lackluster writing robs Rennie’s quest of its energy. Bright spots of suspense are overwhelmed by extraneous detail and a meandering plot.
An intriguing mystery that fails to deliver on its promise. (Mystery. 10-14)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4598-0537-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Orca
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
A satisfying story of family, friendship and small-town cooperation in a 21st-century world.
Sent to stay with octogenarian relatives for the summer, 14-year-old Mike ends up coordinating a community drive to raise $40,000 for the adoption of a Romanian orphan. He’ll never be his dad's kind of engineer, but he learns he’s great at human engineering.
Mike’s math learning disability is matched by his widower father's lack of social competence; the Giant Genius can’t even reliably remember his son’s name. Like many of the folks the boy comes to know in Do Over, Penn.—his great-uncle Poppy silent in his chair, the multiply pierced-and-tattooed Gladys from the bank and “a homeless guy” who calls himself Past—Mike feels like a failure. But in spite of his own lack of confidence, he provides the kick start they need to cope with their losses and contribute to the campaign. Using the Internet (especially YouTube), Mike makes use of town talents and his own webpage design skills and entrepreneurial imagination. Math-definition chapter headings (Compatible Numbers, Zero Property, Tessellations) turn out to apply well to human actions in this well-paced, first-person narrative. Erskine described Asperger’s syndrome from the inside in Mockingbird (2010). Here, it’s a likely cause for the rift between father and son touchingly mended at the novel's cinematic conclusion.
A satisfying story of family, friendship and small-town cooperation in a 21st-century world. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: June 9, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-399-25505-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2011
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones. (Autobiographical fiction. 11-13)
An exhilarating summer marked by death, gore and fire sparks deep thoughts in a small-town lad not uncoincidentally named “Jack Gantos.”
The gore is all Jack’s, which to his continuing embarrassment “would spray out of my nose holes like dragon flames” whenever anything exciting or upsetting happens. And that would be on every other page, seemingly, as even though Jack’s feuding parents unite to ground him for the summer after several mishaps, he does get out. He mixes with the undertaker’s daughter, a band of Hell’s Angels out to exact fiery revenge for a member flattened in town by a truck and, especially, with arthritic neighbor Miss Volker, for whom he furnishes the “hired hands” that transcribe what becomes a series of impassioned obituaries for the local paper as elderly town residents suddenly begin passing on in rapid succession. Eventually the unusual body count draws the—justified, as it turns out—attention of the police. Ultimately, the obits and the many Landmark Books that Jack reads (this is 1962) in his hours of confinement all combine in his head to broaden his perspective about both history in general and the slow decline his own town is experiencing.
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones. (Autobiographical fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-37993-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
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