Though overstuffed with obscure allusions and unnecessary infodumps, this series opener is pleasurably packed with clever,...
A 16-year-old girl detective stars in a mystery paying tribute to Sherlock Holmes.
Arcadia Greentree is a white, clever, middle-class scholarship student at a school for England's upper crust. She's not popular with either classmates or staff; is it because of her cold mannerisms, her conviction that she knows better than her teachers, or her penchant for offering unsolicited advice based on careful observation? Arcadia's content with her studies, the mysteries she unearths, and with the Saturday puzzles her mother gives her (each provided with enough information for readers to solve, followed by a clearly explained solution). Nonetheless, she's concerned about the unknowns within her own school: students behaving strangely, cameras watching the students' every move, a secret door in the headmaster's office. Something unsavory is happening, and Arcadia's parents are in danger. Sherlock Holmes parallels abound. Some, such as Arcadia's violin, will be recognizable to readers who've absorbed Holmes in popular culture. Others, including character and place names taken from lesser-known short stories or Arthur Conan Doyle's life, provide more fan service for adult Sherlock-ians than for young readers not so entrenched in the minutiae of Great Detective trivia.
Though overstuffed with obscure allusions and unnecessary infodumps, this series opener is pleasurably packed with clever, solvable, well-explained puzzles; hits the spot for a mystery lover . (Mystery. 12-14)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-981-4751-50-6
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
The rescue of an at-risk adolescent with light and dark sides takes center stage, but the unfolding mystery adds a dramatic...
Bad seed wars with good in an orphaned teenager who finds out that his mother’s death wasn’t an accident.
Originally published a decade ago in Canada, this series opener set in Toronto hooks Michael—a troubled teen surrounded by poor companions and role models— up with his history teacher, quiet ex-cop John Riel. Four years after the loss of his loving, hardworking mother, Mike’s life seems to be going down the tubes thanks to failing grades, a breakup with his girlfriend and sudden unemployment following an arrest for a minor theft. The electrifying discovery that his new teacher had been in charge of his mom’s never-solved case, though, leads to new questions and clues that implicate both the uncle who is his sole remaining family member and a pair of shady associates. It also leads to an initially hostile but growing mutual attachment that culminates, following a second sudden death and nearly a third, in Mike gaining a steady new foster father. Look for more role modeling and crime solving in two sequels that publish simultaneously: Truth and Lies and Dead and Gone.
The rescue of an at-risk adolescent with light and dark sides takes center stage, but the unfolding mystery adds a dramatic subplot. (Mystery. 12-14)Pub Date: March 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4677-2611-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Darby Creek
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
Ambitious but a failure both as a whole and in its parts.
Teens square off against sinister immortals in an overstuffed muddle presented, Hugo Cabret–style, through an alternating mix of prose and wordless visuals.
White’s prose, created in collaboration with Di Bartolo, puts generic elements and character types together for a slow-moving tale featuring a set of bored undying. They have gathered in a small Maine town in 1900 to move the caged demon that keeps them alive to a new hidden location, in the process menacing a clutch of teenage residents. The creators offer no historical background or specific agenda for the bad guys, aside from just continuing to live. They are pursued across the decades by Arthur, dedicated to their destruction. Di Bartolo’s wordless graphic panels chronicle that quest, which takes Arthur over continents and through the 20th century into the 21st. Readers are likely to find themselves more confused than enthralled. The graphic panels are interspersed in short, episodic sections from the very beginning so that readers will have no idea how they are connected to the text until links are supplied many pages later. Moreover, the art is drawn and colored in a loose, blurry way that makes recurring figures hard to recognize (Arthur has a facial scar, but that’s no help since he doesn’t acquire it until late in the prose story), and many discrete incidents are often so compressed that the graphic portion frequently feels more like a sketchy storyboard than a story.
Ambitious but a failure both as a whole and in its parts. (Graphic/fantasy hybrid. 12-14)Pub Date: April 29, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-56144-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2014
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
