ESCAPE FROM MR. LEMONCELLO'S LIBRARY, Chris Grabenstein's terrific new series' first outing

ESCAPE FROM MR. LEMONCELLO'S LIBRARY
CHRIS GRABENSTEIN (Mr. Lemoncello's Library #1)
Random House Books for Young Readers
$16.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Kyle Keeley is the class clown, popular with most kids, (if not the teachers), and an ardent fan of all games: board games, word games, and particularly video games. His hero, Luigi Lemoncello, the most notorious and creative gamemaker in the world, just so happens to be the genius behind the building of the new town library.

Lucky Kyle wins a coveted spot to be one of the first 12 kids in the library for an overnight of fun, food, and lots and lots of games. But when morning comes, the doors remain locked. Kyle and the other winners must solve every clue and every secret puzzle to find the hidden escape route. And the stakes are very high.

In this cross between Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and A Night in the Museum, Agatha Award-winner Chris Grabenstein uses rib-tickling humor to create the perfect tale for his quirky characters. Old fans and new readers will become enthralled with the crafty twists and turns of this ultimate library experience.

My Review: Want to know something? I read this book *after* its sequel! Want to know something else? I hate reading Young Readers books! And guess what? No, you guess, c'mon! C'mon, please? Oh okay: I did NOT hate reading this book OR its sequel!

I know, right?

Chris Grabenstein writes for middle-graders like a middle-grader would, and I mean that as a compliment. He gets right into the mindset of a young person in a way that I don't see a lot of adult writers doing. He anticipates the questions a younger reader is most likely going to ask and, before they can even be posed consciously, leads the reader to the answer while making it seem they've gotten ahead of the author. That's quality writing for any age, let alone the finicky and detail-oriented 9-to-12 market.

MR. LEMONCELLO'S LIBRARY OLYMPICS: Goodreads Choice Awards 2016

MR. LEMONCELLO'S LIBRARY OLYMPICS
CHRIS GRABENSTEIN (Mr. Lemoncello's Library #2)
Random House Books for Young Readers
$16.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five, for the storyline mostly

The Publisher Says: Welcome, boys and girls, readers of all ages, to the first-ever Library Olympiad! Kyle and his teammates are back, and the world-famous game maker, Luigi Lemoncello, is at it again!

This time Mr. Lemoncello has invited teams from all across America to compete in the first ever LIBRARY OLYMPICS. Will it be fun? Like the commercials say. . . HELLO? It’s a Lemoncello! But something suspicious is going on . . . books are missing from Mr. Lemoncello’s library. Is someone trying to CENSOR what the kids are reading?! In between figuring out mind-boggling challenges, the kids will have to band together to get to the bottom of this mystery.

Now it’s not just a game—can Mr. Lemoncello find the real defenders of books and champions of libraries?

My Review: I voted for this book in the 2016 Goodreads Choice Awards. I like Chris Grabenstein, a Twitter acquaintance. I like Mr. Lemoncello a lot. And the anti-censorship message of this book makes it a shoo-in for my eternal love.

The fact that this is aimed at a middle-grade audience prevents me from discussing the writing. I'm the grandfather of a high-schooler, I got nothin' ta sez bout that becuz don't know anymore. But from my lofty vantage of being closer to 70 than I am to 40, I can say that I enjoyed this fun and breezy read. Its message is one I want all kids to absorb. If I had the spondulix, I'd send three copies to every school library in the US.

MAD MOUSE, second Ceepak & Boyle Jersey Shore mystery

TILT-A-WHIRL (John Ceepak Mysteries #1)
CHRIS GRABENSTEIN
Chris Grabenstein
99¢ Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: There isn't much sun in the fun when a billionaire real estate tycoon is found murdered on the Tilt-A-Whirl at a seedy seaside amusement park in the otherwise quiet summer tourist town of Sea Haven. John Ceepak, a former MP just back from Iraq, has just joined the Sea Haven police department. The job offer came from an old army buddy who hoped to give Ceepak at least a summer's worth of rest and relaxation to help him forget the horrors of war. Instead, Ceepak will head up the murder investigation. He is partnered with Danny Boyle, a 24-year-old part-time summer cop who doesn't carry a gun and only works with the police by day so he has enough pocket money left over to play with his beach buddies at night. In the first novel in a new series written in the spirit of Carl Hiaasen's work, the Tilt-A-Whirl murder pushes Ceepak's deep sense of honor and integrity to the limits, as unexpected twists and turns keep the truth spinning wildly in every direction.

My Review: A first-person narrative by the brilliant, damaged sleuth's awestruck sidekick. A murder richly deserved, a plot cleverly sewn to established behaviors of irreproachable characters, and a very dark and twisted resolution that provides restitution for many past wrongs, all for the price of an insalata caprese on a baguette with taro chips.

I started reading this free Kindle edition this afternoon, nursing a sore back and a bad mood. I stopped a few minutes ago, drew a deep breath, and said, "golly gee willikers, that was a corking experience!" (Ceepak rubbed off on me a little. It's only temporary. I hope.)

I was rather constantly reminded that Ceepak was modeled on Sherlock Holmes, in fact a wee bit heavy-handedly (the cigarette butt, the musical obsession, the lighthouse), but honestly it never made the story less enveloping. The town and the townie-sidekick made me appreciate Ceepak's character's Sherlockian traits. The more Danny, out narrator, talks, the more Ceepak learns and, importantly, teaches. The specific information Ceepak seeks about the locations of stuff around the little resort town is less important than is the lesson that Danny is being offered at every step. It's so well-done that I suspect readers can whip right past that piece of subtext and lose no speck of pleasure in following Ceepak around as he pulls threads and worrys knots and always, always obeys his orders. Even when they come from people who have no idea what they're doing.

The crime scene team at the scene of the murder is led by a revolting slob instead of a brilliant, world-renowned forensic scientist, who happens to be away on vacation when this crime is committed...the murder of a billionaire. Hard luck! It's so awful how things don't happen the right way, although the sloppy lead forensic guy probably gets a come-uppance offstage. Which kinda sucks, I'd really have enjoyed seeing him suffer...though I have some hopes he'll reappear to be a thorn in the side of our Dudley Dooright detective, this shell-shocked love child of Sherlock and Adrian Monk.

I'm all ready to be a big fan. I'm hoping I'll be as happy after I read the next one. Because I read this on the !*&$^^!%%#% Kindle, I can't quote the nice, dry asides and observations that Danny, our Watson-meets-Archie Goodwin, makes, but I smiled a lot, chuckle a good bit, and laughed out loud at least three times.

Yeah, four stars. That's fair. The extra fractions of a star get deducted for a few small breaks, like an attitude shift on Danny's part that goes from up to down to up again a bit too quickly; the resolution of the original red herring being a smidge on the done-and-dusted side; and a bit at the end with Ceepak doing something I found, well, forced and unnecessary.

None of which should even slow you down in your sprint to the Kindle store to spend a *whopping* ninety-nine cents to procure your lease on access to the file. Five hours happily spent making a new bestie? For a lousy buck? Be a devil, risk it!

TILT-A-WHIRL, first of Ceepak and Boyle's Jersey Shore mysteries

MAD MOUSE (John Ceepak Mysteries #2)
CHRIS GRABENSTEIN
Chris Grabenstein
99¢ Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: It's almost Labor Day, and the end of summer could mean the end of someone's life in this exciting sequel to Chris Grabenstein's Tilt-a-Whirl. Young Danny Boyle, the part-time summer cop "down the shore" in Sea Haven, New Jersey, gets taken on a wild ride when he and his longtime beach buddies become the unwitting targets of a mad-man's twisted scheme for revenge. Fortunately, John Ceepak, the cop with a soldier's unshakeable code of honor, stays at Danny's side to help him negotiate the quick twists and turns that threaten to destroy his life, his friends, and everything about the world he loves. Whipping from the boardwalk to the beach and back again, Mad Mouse keeps zigging and zagging at a breakneck pace, all the way to the surprising finish.

My Review: Second verse, same as the first/Coulda got better....

I enjoyed the time off from the troubling events I'm seeing develop at Goodreads. I hid myself in this enjoyable, light-weight read...

...and *whammo* got the boom lowered on me. Every one of us has done things that, had we known what we were doing at the time, would never have been put into action. Fortunately for most of us, the people we've hurt or mistreated don't come after us with sniper weapons in hand and murder at heart. Danny Boyle, the cool kid from school who never left the town he grew up in, has some of those and here they come with guns and murder all at the ready.

Grabenstein's writing is smooth, very easy on the eyes and ears, and carefully crafted. He chooses the scenes of his story with a very practiced and able eye. He offers an interesting angle of view. But the impact of the story is never in doubt, since his main character is the one in the sniper's crosshairs. Readers of Tilt-A-Whirl are already invested in Danny, and those who start here are probably not that far behind.

In the end, though, after going on the ride with Danny, it's the perp that leaves one almost breathless in horror, pity, fear, loathing. It's all so, so pointless. Except to the unhappy victim. And I don't, this time, mean Danny or his friends.

Very affecting.

What worked less well for me was the grafted-on feeling that the romance, which apparently blew up overnight, left me with; the Ceepak presence was deployed in an oddly spotty manner, feeling not exactly perfunctory but less personal than in the first book; and the new character Buzz was, well, here I can say it, perfunctory. Quick strokes, convenient presence, but not integral or maybe integrated, into the action.

A series I will pursue, no doubt, and with pleasure. Just a few clouds in the sunshiney sky. Nothing to suggest even a rain shower, still less a storm. I like finding myself in Sea Haven, and that says a lot.

WHACK-A-MOLE, third John Ceepak Jersey Shore mystery and the best one yet

WHACK-A-MOLE (John Ceepak Mysteries #3)
CHRIS GRABENSTEIN
Chris Grabenstein
99¢ Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.6* of five

The Publisher Says: An innocent discovery on the beach in Sea Haven leads John Ceepak, the cop with an unshakeable code of honor, and his rookie partnet, the twentysomething wisecracker Danny Boyle, into the hunt for a long-dormant serial killer who might be crawling out of his hiding hole to strike again.

Like the relentless rodents in the Boardwalk arcade game, gruesome clues keep popping up all over the island as Ceepak (the former soldier who will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those who do) finds himself up against an adversary with an even stricter code, a code he rigidly enforces.

When the killer targets his next victim, the consequences become dire for Ceepak and Boyle. This is a game they have to win!

My Review: A solid four-star outing for that Dudley Do-Right of the Jersey Shore, John Ceepak, and his wing man young Danny Boyle. One thing's for sure, the villain of the piece gets a hellacious run-around before he's brought to justice.

The first two books in the series were good fun, with lots of wisecracking and silliness from Danny, along with some very Monk-like fun-making at Ceepak's expense. This outing has the fun, less of the fun-making; in fact, the shoe goes very much on the other foot this outing. I enjoyed that.

I also enjoyed the darker and more intense pace of this entry in the series. It serves the characters well because it's about them growing up and filling in their roles as a team. There's so much more to work with in a book-three mystery, an established sense of place and a mode of communication and a web of memories to draw on. Grabenstein does all of that, stays true to Ceepak's character in every way and manages to continue Danny Boyle's maturation and education without *whap*smack*bang*ing us to notice it. In this book, Danny's lessons are pricey and yet completely relatable. Don't get me wrong, I was still hollering at the Kindle, "DON'T YOU DO THAT! NO NO!! NOT THAT!" Danny wasn't listening. In a world with smartphones, I think I can be excused for mistaking the Kindle for an old Dick-Tracy-style two-way wrist radio.

That's my story, anyway.

By the end of the book, when the stakes were ratcheted higher than ever before, I was over-pushing the paging buttons and having to back-track. I was that wrapped up in the ending. You know how the Big Reveal is so often the Middlin' Reveal? Not this time. Nope. Big Reveal is a biiiig surprise.

The solution to the crime isn't too shabby, either. Heh.

New Mystery Review on 22 September 2013

I've finished and reviewed the second John Ceepak mystery, MAD MOUSE, in my Kindle Originals section. I can't wait to dive into the next one in the series. Luckily they're only 99¢ each. And there are several!