Delightful, highly logical, and well-informed fun.
She’s only 11, but she’s smarter and better informed than most adults, and she’s determined to solve mysteries for a living.
Friday’s academician parents barely even know she’s there, and that suits Friday just fine. She tries to avoid contact with people as she pursues her own interests, which include reading her parents’ entire extensive library. But when she solves a mystery for her detective uncle and wins $50,000, she decides to spend it on a year in the area’s most prestigious boarding school. There, she finds she can’t blend in, but she also becomes embroiled in various mysteries that she solves with the aplomb of Sherlock Holmes. She irritates the school headmaster, among others, with her know-it-all attitude but makes a good friend in her roommate, Melanie, a girl who constantly notices small details—a trait that will help Friday in her detective pursuits. From solving petty crimes and finding missing homework, she moves on to an enthusiastic investigation of the monster hiding in the school swamp. Spratt begins this new series with a nifty, engaging protagonist who can keep readers laughing and help young geeks feel good about themselves. Friday and Melanie make a great team that clearly will continue to detect their way through the coming sequel. Gosier's animation-inflected illustrations are a nice complement.
Delightful, highly logical, and well-informed fun. (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62672-297-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Crime does pay off—to the benefit of others—in this enjoyable novel.
A kid discovers the identity of his depressed town’s anonymous benefactor and ends up learning some secrets about himself.
Eleven-year-old Sam Brattle, embittered at having the lousiest Christmas ever—and with a heart transplant and extensive history of larceny behind him—is blackmailed by his mysterious neighbor into taking on the role of Nickel Bay’s homegrown secret Santa, the titular Nickel Bay Nick. Wealthy Mr. Wells has stealthily been distributing $100 bills around town at Christmastime for years, boosting the spirits and fortunes of its economically discouraged citizens. This year, laid up with a broken leg and possessing a weighty dossier of Sam’s crimes, which threaten to remove Sam from his struggling single dad’s care, Mr. Wells needs someone crafty and nimble-fingered to do the deed for him—i.e., Sam, who can’t afford to refuse. What ensues adds up to a fast-paced adventure, narrated by Sam in the first person, that’s filled with humor, excitement, some shady characters, secrets, Sam’s growing maturity and some deep emotional pain. There’s a real cinematic feel here—Pitchford also writes for the screen and stage—and there’s a certain amount of implausibility, predictability and coincidence, yet these contrivances don’t mar this well-written tale. Sam’s a great, well-realized kid, and readers will root for him every step of the way. A surprising, poignant twist at the end explains Mr. Wells’ true motives for involving Sam and brings about a satisfying, uplifting finale.
Crime does pay off—to the benefit of others—in this enjoyable novel. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-399-25465-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2013
The result is a series opener that falls frustratingly short of its potential; here’s hoping subsequent volumes (the first...
A series opener introduces a crime-fighting preteen escapologist.
Max Flash is a first-class escape artist and master illusionist who spends his free time bound in chains trying to escape from tanks of water. But when Max discovers that his parents are actually undercover agents for a secret organization known as the Department for Extraordinary Activity, life at the Flash household becomes even more interesting. In this kickoff novel, a programmer from the hottest gaming company in the world accidentally creates a portal between the real and Virtual worlds, and Max is called on by the DFEA to use his unique skill set to travel to the Virtual world and close the portal so that rogue characters can’t travel back and forth between worlds and wreak havoc. All of the ingredients are there—the premise is intriguing, there’s the promise of fast-paced action, and a Houdini-esque kid protagonist has the potential to be a winning character—but unfortunately, the book fails to ever truly bring Max or his story to life. Even the artwork is disappointingly one-dimensional. The story is told in the third person by a decidedly adult narrator, and Max is never allowed to find his own voice and connect on an emotional level with readers.
The result is a series opener that falls frustratingly short of its potential; here’s hoping subsequent volumes (the first six are publishing simultaneously) improve. (Adventure. 9-12)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4677-1465-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Darby Creek
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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