A delightful and surprising mystery that bodes well for further installments.
Teen sleuth Kat Dylan returns to solve another mystery in Wieland’s middle-grade novel.
Kat Dylan and her younger brother, Alec, live in Crabtree, Michigan, a town on Lake Michigan, with Nick Hawkins, who is their grandfather and the town’s police chief. The story begins with a text from Gabby, a classmate of Kat’s; though they don’t run in the same circles, Gabby wants to meet. One clandestine meeting leads to another (Gabby asks Kat some cryptic questions about police interrogations that have something to do with a boy she met), and, just like that, Kat, Alec, and Kat’s classmate, Tommy (who Kat calls her “not-boyfriend”) are on the case, determined to solve a mystery. This situation is more dangerous than the one they faced in the previous installment of the series: the trio soon finds Gabby’s dead body on the beach. Parallel narratives follow in which Kat and her friends mobilize to solve Gabby’s death while Grandpa Nick and his law enforcement officers try to do the same. The case expands to include the kidnapping of the son of a Chicago billionaire and a couple of trips to (and one wild foot chase in) Chicago as Kat and her confederates mostly stay one step ahead of everyone else. Kat is everything readers might want in a young hero: She’s whip-smart, loyal to her friends and brother, and has a wicked sense of humor (“Tom moved. Did he need a doctor? I wanted him healthy before I beat the crap out of him”). Alec, too, comes into his own as a character here; he’s fully Kat’s partner and much more than just her pesky younger sibling. Together, they lead a story boasting some surprising twists and turns and exciting, scary moments. As in the first book in the series, it’s clear that Kat and Tommy are destined to be together, and it appears there will be more time for that to happen in future series entries, which readers will eagerly await.
A delightful and surprising mystery that bodes well for further installments.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2023
ISBN: 97989875701326
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Smart Aleck Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An environmental mystery featuring lots of clever detecting, a bit of danger, and real felonies to investigate.
Toxic waste dumped in the Everglades gives a quartet of middle school sleuths their first case.
Leading Carl Hiaasen fans over familiar ground, Ponti pitches 12-year-old Alex Sherlock and his 13-year-old sister, Zoe, with school friends Lina and Yadi as sidekicks, into a summer caper. It all begins with the hunt for a supposed fortune buried decades ago by Al Capone, culminates in a narrow escape from an exploding yacht, and ultimately exposes a smooth-talking bad actor shady enough to bring in even federal authorities. As the kids’ live-in Grandpa, a retired investigative reporter, delivers pointers on how to conduct interviews and sift evidence while grandly driving them around South Florida in his classic Cadillac, Roberta, the budding detectives display sharp wits, eyes, and negotiating skills. The last come in particularly useful when they’re dealing with their lawyer…who’s also their mom. Both the plot and the chain of evidence take logical courses, and since Dad is a marine biologist and Lina’s a recent transplant from Wyoming, Ponti is able to use their dialogue to highlight the local culture and larger ecological issues. Main characters present white, apart from tech wiz Yadi, who is cued Latine.
An environmental mystery featuring lots of clever detecting, a bit of danger, and real felonies to investigate. (Mystery. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781665932530
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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