In Two Worlds: Silent Lee and the Adventure of the Side Door Key by Alex Hiam

Time was complex when it came to Generous Lee, who had lived mostly in a world that was a full century out of date.

When you left Auntie's house by the side door, you found yourself stepping down into the side garden. A narrow path led to a black iron gate and then to the sidewalk on Newbery Street... . Through the side door there were actual residences, with mothers taking babies out for a stroll in big, black perambulators and maids hurrying back with baskets of dinner ingredients.

Silent Lee, called Sie, is aware of the modern world, from which her most-unmotherly mother infrequently flies in from her jet-setter world and whom her Auntie Gen whispers is a spy. But she has always been with Gen, who lives, by means of the key to a magical "side door," in the world of Boston a hundred years before. Sie's school, the Girls Academy of Latin and Alchemy, is a ten-minute walk from the side door, where she excels in Latin, math, and especially spell-weaving.

But when her mother appears suddenly, declaring that her Aunt Gen has become ill and died, Sie is abruptly removed from her side-door world and sent to live in the attic of "the cousins," who abruptly disappear "on vacation," leaving her to discover that their house is to be sold from under her. And when she returns to Auntie Gen's house, the side door no longer exists, and she is left alone, a stranger in the strange century of the front door world.

But then Sie is befriended by an acquaintance from her new school, Raahi, who is immediately drawn into her almost incredible story and becomes her partner in discovering what has really happened to Auntie Gen. Together the two find themselves moving between the two worlds--one moment on a MBTA bus and the next, by means of Sie's spell-weaving, in old Boston, pursued by a cadre of X-Men-styled agents complete with black suits, black SUV's, and black helicopters, who track them down  through both sides of the time-warp that is Sie's world....

"What do we do?" asked Raahi.

"Time for another illusion," said Sie. She began to chant in some ancient language. She wove complex shapes in the air..... Two shapes appeared, floating beside them. They rotated as they thickened into humans forms. And there, standing in front of them, were themselves.

The real Sie and Raahi watched, as their conjured doubles reached the door... and knocked. Large arms in dark suit-coats reached out and pulled them inside.

In Alex Hiam's brand-new fantasy mystery, Silent Lee (Webster Press, 2019), two unlikely but intrepid characters bond in a time-traveling fight against a dark enemy in a style reminiscent of Hermione Granger's and Harry Potter's adventures between the muggle and magical worlds. Although Sie is the center around which the plot is woven, Raahi quickly begins to steal the show, his own audacious courage and magical sleuthing skills beginning to emerge as the two flee through both centuries only a step ahead of danger.

With his setting in Boston, where the old and new live side by side, Hiam's narrative skills immediately envelope young teen readers into his fantasy tale as easily as Silent Lee slips in and out of the centuries. Fans of this light but truly spellbinding novel will be glad to learn that a sequel is promised, Silent Lee and the Oxford Adventure.

The Game Is On! Trouble in Bugland: A Collection of Inspector Mantis Mysteries by William Kotzwinkle

The disappearance of Miss Juliana butterfly brought two familiar figures through the fog--one of them tall and slow-moving, the other short and quick.

"A most disturbing thing" said Doctor Hopper, assistant to Inspector Mantis.

"Miss Juliana is a circus performer, is she not?" inquired the Inspector

"A bareback rider." Doctor Hopper tapped his cane on the pave. "One of the loveliest creatures ever to circle the ring."

"I see," said Inspector Mantis. "And did you enjoy yesterday's performance?"

Doctor Hopper looked up with surprise. "Why, how did you know I was there?"

"That bit of straw which still clings to your trouser cuff---" He touched Hopper's scarf "--a piece of peanut shell here. And--" Inspector Mantis gestured with his long arm. "--you have cotton candy in your mustache."

And the game is on, with super-sleuth Mantis and loyal sidekick Hopper off  in a hackney to the circus arena of impressario P. T. Barnworm for some sleuthing out of clues. And Inspector Mantis does not fail as he studies the sawdust in the ring where the beauteous butterfly disappeared in mid-act the night before. And sticking to the bottom of his shoes, he finds the clue he seeks.

"Miss Juliana was seized by a gang of Assassin Bugs. Their traces are everywhere around the ring. Let us hurry, Doctor, before the threads of this case are blown away by the winds of time."

With an entomological but distinctly Victorian setting for the classic characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, William Kotzwinkle slyly sets his six-legged detectives on the trail, encountering the usual colorful characters, a poison-peddling tick in cahoots with A. Stinkbug, Esquire, whose shop provides the sinister potions put to use by the nefarious criminal, The Tarantula, who holds the lovely Juliana in thrall in his lair.

In five Inspector Mantis cases, author William Kotzwinkle's new edition of Trouble in Bugland: A Collection of Inspector Mantis Mysteries (Godine Storyteller) (Godine Books, 2015 ed.) whisks readers to foggy old England, er, Bugland, in a parody that features the brainy master detective and his doughty assistant in stories which, like their model, set out from their snug flat on Flea Street into the foggy, grimy city and by railway carriage into nineteenth-century countryside, with a cast of characters such as Professor Channing Buglouse, The Duchess of Doodlebug, Gallgnat, J. P. Suckbeetle, and Walking-Stick, who seems a stand-in for Sherlock's brilliant brother Mycroft.

Readers who have encountered Arthur Conan Doyle's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in almost any format, will enjoy the language and quickly pick up on the satire in these insectivorous spinoffs, but all detective story fans will gladly follow Inspector Mantis and enjoy his methodical collection of clues and rational observations which invariably lead to the solution of the crime. Kotzwinkle's stories are abetted by his partner in crime, artist Joe Servello, whose blackline drawings, in meticulously crosshatched and detailed rococo illustrations, some in sumptuous color, evoke the atmosphere of the era perfectly.

Children who know Conan Doyle's Holmes will most enjoy Trouble in Bugland. But even those who don't are likely to appreciate the book's sly mock seriousness and flights of rhetoric and imagination," says The New York Times Book Review

A Wanted Man: The Fugitive (Theodore Boone) by John Grisham

Theo was standing in the middle of the subway car, with Chase and April close by.

A man seated tightly between two women lowered his newspaper as he flipped a page. He looked familiar, oddly familiar.

Theo wiggled a few feet closer. He'd seen that face before, but where? Maybe the hair was darker, maybe the reading glasses were new. Suddenly, it struck Theo like a brick against the head. The face belonged to Pete Duffy.

Pete Duffy! The most wanted man in the history of Strattenburg. Number seven on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted.

Theo Boone's class trip to Washington, D.C., is quickly forgotten as he realizes whom he's seeing. Quickly Theo pulls out his iPhone, and pretending to play a game, manages to video the man, zooming in closely as the guy folds his newspaper and gets up to get off the Metro at the next station. Leaving his classmates on the subway, Theo follows the suspect as he exits and stays behind him several blocks until he loses him in the crowd.

Theodore Boone, kid lawyer, has more than a citizen's duty at stake here. He and Duffy have a long history. Pete Duffy had been indicted for the strangling of his wife through Theo's behind-the-scenes location of a secret witness who saw the accused don a golf glove on his right hand and enter his own house adjoining the golf course and then bury both gloves deep in a rubbish bin, but Duffy had jumped bail before conviction and disappeared months ago.

Theo knows he has to do something. He calls his Uncle Ike, disbarred lawyer and family black sheep, who flies to Washington, and in disguise joins Theo on the subway in surveillance for the fugitive, finally calling in the FBI. But Duffy doesn't show, and it is not until Theo and Uncle Ike are heading home at the airport that Theo literally bumps into the fugitive.

"Sorry," Theo mumbled. Then he froze, but remembered Agent Frye's warning, "Don't stare."

He called Agent Slade and started following Duffy, now with blond hair and different glasses, down the concourse at a distance.

"I got "Packer!" he whispered into his phone.

And that's just the beginning of John Grisham's fourth book in his Theodore Boone series, Theodore Boone: the Fugitive (Dutton Books, 2015). The FBI agents collar Duffy boarding a plane to Brazil, and he is returned to Theo's hometown for retrial, now also indicted for fleeing the law. But Duffy's murder conviction hangs on the testimony of illegal immigrant Bobby Escobar, and Bobby is reasonably afraid to testify for fear of deportation or, worse, murder by Duffy's accomplices, and Theo, too, is afraid for his own and Bobby's safety.

When the best-selling John Grisham puts out an adult or junior novel, the reader knows he's going to get an edge-of-seat, too-fast-to-blink page turner, and Grisham definitely delivers in his new fourth book in the popular "kid lawyer" series. Grisham's middle-reader thrillers enjoy the same virtues and vices as his adult literature, and a fast-paced crime novel that is hard to put down is pretty much guaranteed and delivered in the opening chapters of this tale. But Grisham has a lot of backstory to pack into this one, and in the second part, his writing seems rushed as he pivots into the rest of the exposition and builds a different sort of suspense to get to the climactic trial scene, adding a few more improbable details to get where he wants to go. But, hey! Who really cares, as Grisham brings it all down to the denouement, as Duffy is sent to the slammer for life--or not, if the author doesn't retire his intrepid eighth-grade sleuth, Theo, the up-dated Nancy Drew of his time.

Like the young reader eco-thrillers of his contemporary Carl Hiaasen, Grisham's books offer sophisticated, witty, and realistic kid characters who manage to deal with adult matters with plenty of cool. Recommended even for the reluctant reader, this one should pair well with Dave Barry's hilarious new best-seller for kids, The Worst Class Trip Ever (See review here.) Although this fourth Theo Boone tale stands well alone, readers won't want miss the earlier books in the series, Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer, Theodore Boone: The Accused, Theodore Boone: the Abduction,
and Theodore Boone: the Activist.