The Irregulars Rule: Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City by Kirsten Miller

Kirsten Miller's debut novel, Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City: Inside the Shadow City (Kiki Strike), is a full-blown mystery/adventure geek-chick lit thriller, a sort of literary comic book (without the comic drawings) which will have wide appeal for middle readers.

The narrator, twelve-year-old Ananka Fishbein, is a pudgy, nerdy isolated student at toney Atalanta Academy in Manhattan, who finds her only excitement in trying to avoid the taunts and bullying of the ruling clique, The Five, headed ruthlessly by the beautiful Russian doyen, "Princess" Sidonia Galatzina. But when a sinkhole in Washington Park opens up a hidden room far below ground level, Ananka is intrigued, especially when she spots a tiny, white-haired girl sneaking out of the muddy hole. Investigating the sunken room, she discovers an amazing book, Glimpses of Gotham, a guide to the New York City of 1866, with a tantalizing chapter on an underground world called "The Shadow City." Soon Ananka discovers that the tiny girl is a student at her school under the name of Kiki Strike and begins to follow her in hopes of learning more. Soon Kiki reveals herself to Ananka and invites her to join in the exploration of the underground Shadow City.

Kiki recruits a talented group of girls from assorted Girl Scout troops: Betty Bent, who is a master of disguise; Oona Wong, a sweatshop escapee who is a talented forger and hacker; Luz Lopez, electronic and mechanical genius; and DeeDee Morlock, chemist and explosives maven. Christening themselves the Baker Street Irregulars (The Irregulars for short), the girls acquire uniforms, gear, and a secret map of underground New York, part of the three-level NYCMap kept secret to prevent misuse by criminals and terrorists. Their first mission begins with a secret entry through an empty tomb. With Ananka mapping the Shadow City's chambers as they go, the Irregulars discover chambers filled the skeletons of plague victims, barrooms with bottles of a strange brew called "Devil's Apple," and the bony remains of the author of Glimpses of Gotham, extracting from his dead hands a huge bag of gold coins.

The expedition turns nearly fatal, however, when Kiki orders that DeeDee blow open a certain door despite the chamber's proximity to gas and water mains above. In the explosion, DeeDee is seriously injured and the girls are forced to flee the tunnels and abandon their quest as water from the broken mains fill the basements and streets above. Ananka is suspicious of Kiki's motives, suspecting that she has a vendetta against "Princess" Sidonia, whose house was approximately above the explosion site, and Kiki disappears from the scene for two years.

But when wannabe clique members from the Atalanta Academy begin to be kidnapped, Ananka's investigations reunite her with Kiki, who calls the Irregulars back into existence. Kiki insists that the kidnappers' motive is to gain control of the other two layers of the NYCMap as the ransom for the kidnapped girls. Sending Betty, disguised as a potential kidnappee to a secret offshore party thrown by The Five, the Irregulars track Betty and the other girls tp a secret underground chamber in the Shadow City, and in a convoluted turn of plot the Irregulars, led by the daring Kiki, unearth a criminal conspiracy controlled by the Sidonia Galatzina and her mother Olivia, whose chief goal has been to destroy Kiki, the true heir to the Pokrovian throne and wealth. While "Princess" Sidonia and her mother escape, the other members of the clique are exposed as family members of a smuggling cartel which has used the tunnels of the Shadow City.

Mystery, suspense, adventure, daring and talented girl characters, a disputed fortune, villains you love to hate, Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City: Inside the Shadow City (Kiki Strike) has it all for lovers of the thriller genre. Luckily for these readers, there is now a sequel, Kiki Strike: The Empress's Tomb (Kiki Strike) in which the Irregulars come together again to right the wrongs of New York City. Part of the fun of the Kiki Strike novels is in Kirsten Miller's coloring of the narrative with an obvious fondness for her Manhattan setting and her skill in portraying her characters through description and dialogue. For readers who love the exciting twists and turns of plot, these are fun books with wide appeal, and more sequels should soon be forthcoming.