Showdown at Cooperstown: Rivals by Tim Green

"Great players always want to go up against the best," his dad would say, "even if they don't win. A real rivalry is when teams or players go back and forth between who wins and loses so when they play each other, both are at their very best."

It bothered Josh that he didn't relish the thought of a good rivalry. He just couldn't help wishing for the kind of games where they swamped the other team. That's how it had been in this qualifying tournament so far, but Josh knew that it wouldn't be true today.

Josh LeBlanc, the twelve-year-old phenom from Tim Green's best-seller, Baseball Great, is back in a sequel which again combines a taut gameplay narrative with a mystery which shows the seamy underside of sports.

After having suffered a potentially vision-threatening intentional beanball in the playoffs leading up to the tournament at Cooperstown, Josh LeBlanc is forced to decide between a forced hiatus from baseball while his occipital fracture heals or surgery that will leave a noticeable scar but make it safe for him to play in the Hall of Fame tourney. Josh and his dad and coach opt for the surgery over his mom's objections, and three weeks later, his sight and his desire to play are as strong as ever, especially when Josh overhears his parents' conversation that reveals that their financial security may be riding on this series. With his meatball sidekick Benjie Lido rooming with him and his sort-of girlfriend Jaden Niedermeyer along as sports reporter for their local newspaper, Josh keeps up his miraculous homerun-hitting pace through the opening rounds of the series.

But in one of his games, Josh's Titans are up against an opposing pitcher who throws real heat--when he's not a bit wild. Josh can't help but notice that the umpire, a down-on-his-luck local named Seevers, is giving the pitcher an unfairly wide strike zone. Josh's suspicions are further aroused when he realizes that the ump seems to be tipping the bracket to make sure that the Titans will play the Comets in the final two, a team whose star pitcher, Mickey Mullen, Jr., is the mediagenic son of ex-Big Leaguer Mickey Mullen, now a celebrity movie leading man who seems determined to make sure his son follows in his footsteps to baseball glory. It doesn't help that Jaden appears to be intrigued with the good-looking young Mullen and seemingly enjoys the comforts of Mullen's limo and his first-name contact with such ESPN lights as Bob Costas. "I'm just doing research," she reassures Josh as she heads off with Mickey, but Josh can't help wondering if the the lure of celebrity journalism isn't coming between them.

Then, in a restaurant Josh sees Mullen's PR man Milton slipping a suspiciously stuffed packet to Seevers. A quick look at the schedule confirms his hunch that Seevers is set to call the final game in which he and Mullen will face off at the plate, and Josh realizes that unless he and Benjie can come up with some solid photographic evidence of these payoffs, Seevers very well may manage to throw the title game to Mullen's team. Josh ponders what he can do about this obvious setup:

"Your dad's a sharp cookie," Benjie said. "Whatever's meant to be, right? We just let it happen and enjoy the whole thing. I love that."

"No!" Josh said. "He's not right! Not about that. We can't just let it happen, Benjie. We've got to win this thing tomorrow, and I'm not talking about winning it just for us. I can't let Mickey Mullen think that he gets whatever he wants, like he's acting in some movie and we're all just a bunch of extras. We've got to win this thing."

"We've got to win it for my dad."

A bit of serious sleuthing in which Jaden and Benjie play a significant part, culminating in an exciting speedboat chase with Jaden crashing an ESPN event with her scoop, brings the book to its climax, the final game, in which the two teams and Josh and Mickey, Jr. face off in a fair contest. Author Green graciously gives the final heroics, not to Josh, whose bat of course keeps them in the contest up to the final inning, but to his chubby, wisecracking, and laid-back pal Benjie, who finally lives up to his self-proclaimed title as the "heavy hitter."

Tim Green's latest, Rivals: A Baseball Great Novel (HarperCollins, 2010), has all the page-turning qualities of its predecessor and will keep sports and mystery fiction readers in play all the way through. Some fans may miss the preponderance of gameplay action which makes Green's novels so riveting, but this one concentrates a bit more on character-driven action which has its own appeal to maturing readers. As a writer of hard-hitting sports fiction, Tim Green proves that, like his young hero Josh LeBlanc, he's still very much in the game.

Rest in Peace: The Funeral Director's Son by Coleen Murtagh Paratore

To live. To love. To leave something better behind.

Three simple things to get yourself a spot in heaven.

It sounds simple, but you'd be surprised how people can screw things up. Most everyone who dies in Clover moves on without help from me. They live, they love, they leave something better behind. And so, when the ship comes, they're ready to go to good.

That's what I think Heaven is. Good.

But other people have trouble leaving. Anchors weigh them down. Something they didn't say. Something they didn't do. That's where I come in.

I've been helping the dead for a while now, but I made up my mind, I'm quitting.

Twelve-year-old Kip Campbell is the seventh Christopher Campbell, the only son of the town of Clover's undertaker, the presumed future director of Campbell & Sons Funeral Home. For now Kip is the "outside man." He mows the grass and sweeps the steps and parks the cars for big funerals. Beyond these mundane duties, though, Kip has inherited the family "gift," passed on to one of each generation, the ability to hear the newly dead speak and to help them resolve the ties to life and move on to the good.

But Kip's wish is to move on himself, to leave Clover behind in a few years and to move into the wider world. But like the newly dead he hears inside his head, Kip is tied to Clover by his desire to please his kind parents and grandmother, and his worries about the family finances, now falling into dire straits by the competition with a big box funeral franchise which is taking away their generations-old business.

And then there's Billy Blye, lying dead downstairs amid what Kip calls the "Frankenstein stuff," whose voice Kip hears, pleading for his help in slipping the anchors of his life.

Kip was always afraid of Billy in life--a scary old hermit with one eye and a loud, angry voice who once chased him away from his property when Kip's kite got tangled up in the roses on his fence. Why would Billy Blye turn to Kip now? What was the secret that he concealed in life and from which in death he begs to be freed?

Almost against his will, Kip is drawn into this mystery. Billy's voice keeps coming to him, telling him about someone or something called "Hook" who can reveal the secret, but the only Hook Kip can connect to Billy is his old parrot. When Kip slips into the dead man's cottage, he finds the bird still in his cage, muttering strange things over and over. "Akilder. Akilder," and "Fergimmecarry. "Fergimmecarry."

Unraveling the sense behind the mysterious drowning of of Billy and, ten years before, his wife Kerry, becomes Kip's task in Coleen Murtagh Paratore's The Funeral Director's Son (Simon & Schuster, 2008), a quest which takes him deep into the past life of the coastal town of Clover and deep into the secrets of the human heart as well. Although Kip has his gift and the good luck of a four-leaved clover talisman on his side, in the end he still has the mystery of his own future left to unravel. Although Kip finds some peace in his new understanding of the place of his family in the fabric of his hometown, his own conclusion remains yet to be written.

Paratore's characters and setting are strong and engaging. Kip himself is both a believable twelve-year-old, concerned with getting money for camp with his friends and impressing the pretty new girl in his class, and an enigmatic figure, gifted beyond his years with a psychic connection to the afterlife which he wears comfortably most of the time. For those readers who are unsatisfied, still wishing to know what Kip will do with his gift, luckily Paratore has a sequel, The Funeral Director's Son: 'Kip Campbell's Gift, forthcoming in August.

Paratore is also the author of the popular The Wedding Planner's Daughter (The Wedding Planner's Daughter #1) and its sequels also known jointly as The Cupid Chronicles (The Wedding Planner's Daughter #2.).

Conundrum: The Name Of This Book Is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch

WARNING!
DO NOT READ BEYOND THIS PAGE!

Good.
Now I know I can trust you.
You're curious. You're brave. And you're not afraid to lead a life of crime.

But let's get something straight; if, despite my warning you insist on reading this book, you can't hold me responsible for the consequences.

And make no bones about it, this is a very dangerous book.

Pseudonymous Bosch opens his latest, The Name of this Book Is Secret with a dire warning to his readers. Actually, though, his characters should have been the ones to receive the warning, because in this fantasy mystery thriller, they're the ones who "shoulda stood in bed."

But eleven-year-old Cassandra is always prepared for the worst. A dedicated survivalist who always packs a flashlight, rope, and among other gear, a box of grape juice, good for hydration or emergency ink, she's always looking for a disaster to remedy. So when real estate lady Gloria Fortune stops by her grandfathers' shop to drop off a box of left-behind antiques and bric-a-brac from a dead magician's house, Cass is intrigued with a lavish container of fluid-filled vials labelled The Symphony of Smells hidden at the bottom. Recruiting a quirky loner from her sixth grade, Max-Ernest, who is undeniably bright but has a the "condition" of talking incessantly, Cassandra persuades Max to come along to look for more clues inside the magician's house. While sneaking into his strange underground home, the sleuths are forced to hide as agent Gloria shows the house to an odd couple, purported newlyweds, Mr. L., a suave European man, and Ms. Mauvais, an incredibly beautiful, and seemingly very young blonde woman, who together seem to be looking for something besides a honeymoon cottage in the magician's old house.

While inside Cass and Max-Ernest discover a notebook, and when Max cracks the code on the first page, they locate the magician's personal journal which tells the story of the kidnapping of his younger brother, Luciano, more than fifty years before, seemingly abducted because of his special ability--synesthesia--which enabled him to perceive colors and music as scents. When Cass's and Max's classmate Ben is abducted from the school by the same mysterious couple the next day, Cass realizes that Ben must have been taken because he, too, has the power of synesthesia.

Tracking the two down to the Midnight Sun Spa, Cass and Max-Ernest find themselves going undercover to uncover the evil scheme of the two wizards to extract from Ben's body the secret to eternal life and youth. There are many twists and turns to the plot as the two detectives work their way into the inner sanctum of the evil two and courageously rescue their classmate from the cruel clutches of the wizards.

With a wry warning or two for the reader along the way, the tongue-in-cheek author leads our heroes from near miss to brave escape to unforeseen rescue as they work their way to the conclusion, a conclusion which apparently doesn't conclude, as the story closes with a coded message, which, rendered readable by Max's skilled decoding, offers a compelling invitation:

In recognition of your bravery and unique talents, I hereby invite you to become members of the Terces Society--and to enlist in our fight against the Masters of the Midnight Sun.

Understand this: once you swear to the Oath of Terces, your lives, they will never be the same. You will face the hazards and the hardships. And you must obey all the orders without question.

A sequel is indeed forthcoming October 1, and fans of this offbeat and fantastic mystery will doubtless be waiting for the next book, despite its title which warns If You're Reading This, It's Too Late!

Hocus Pocus Hero: Shots at Sea: A Nate & Houdini Mystery by Tom Lalicki

Following up on his first book, Danger in the Dark: A Houdini & Nate Mystery in the history mystery series Houdini & Nate Mysteries, Tom Lilicki brings together his crime-busting pair, twelve-year-old New Yorker Nate, and master of illusion Harry Houdini, this time on a historic crossing of the Atlantic on the luxe liner Lusitania.

Crossing to England with his mother and wealthy Aunt Alice, Nate is surprised to discover among the passengers former President Teddy Roosevelt and his old mentor and partner in crime solving, Harry Houdini. Nate has been practicing his observation skills as the other passengers are boarding, hoping for some excitement during the five day trip, and he soon gets his wish when during a morning constitutional around the deck, an apparent anarchist terrorist fires his pistol at close range at the ex-president. As a heroic guard shields Roosevelt with his body, Houdini and Nate move to try to stop the fleeing gunman. Houdini is slightly wounded and Nate suffers a quick blow to the head as the gunner escapes. Although the man's bearded face is shielded by a low-brimmed hat, Nate is certain that his physique and manner match one of the passengers he had observed on the gangplank the day before.

Working together, Nate, President Roosevelt, and Harry Houdini conceive a brilliant but dangerous plan to flush out the terrorist by scheduling a gala costume party aboard ship on the final night of the voyage. Houdini promises to entertain the President and guests with his most amazing illusion, as armed stewards and a Scotland Yard detective in disguise are scattered among the crowd, hoping to capture the anarchist when he makes his move. Although ordered for his own safety to remain in his stateroom with his friend, bellboy Phineas, for a guard, Nate convinces Phin to procure a bellboy uniform as a disguise in which he can attend as a virtually invisible servant at the fete.

Moving surreptitiously among the lavishly costumed celebrants, Nate spots the anarchist smeared with coal dust and disguised as an engine room stoker with his shovel. Nate knows he must warn the armed Scotland Yard detective before the gunman can strike, but how can he do it without alarming the would-be assassin? Watching Houdini skillfully beginning to work his illusion, Nate suddenly knows what he must do!

The deluxe steamship Lusitania was the fastest passenger liner in 1909, boasting the most avant garde technology of its time, and this intriguing historical setting gives the appealing character of Nate and his clever partner Harry Houdini a fascinating stage upon which to carry out their political sleuthing.

Shots at Sea: A Houdini & Nate Mystery (Houdini and Nate Mysteries) is mystery which weaves the historical setting and real-life characters of Teddy Roosevelt and Harry Houdini into a suspenseful story with an adventurous young detective who will have strong appeal for middle readers.