Who Killed Coach Killdare? Buzz Kill by Beth Fantaskey

Head football coach "Hollerin' Hank" Kildare was having such a massive meltdown that even from where I was standing, I could see his trademark blue vein popping in his neck and the usual flecks of spittle flying out of his mouth.

Well, maybe I couldn't see the spit, but from the way demoted, one-time quarterback Mike Price kept flinching, I was pretty sure Mike was getting a shower during the game.

As the student reporter assigned to this "bleepin'" game--and daughter of Assistant Coach Jack Ostermeyer--I should have known what had just happened on the field, but the truth was, I didn't really like sports. However, I couldn't overlook it when Coach abruptly wheeled around and, completely unprovoked, booted our school's costumed mascot Buzz the Bee right in the stinger, launching him, stumbling and flailing wildly, into my archenemy Vivienne Fitch, sending her sprawling on her butt, so everybody got a view up her flippy little "cheer" skirt.

That really should've made me laugh, but I actually kind of winced. If this ends up on youTube, Viv is going to murder Mr. Killdare and stomp a poor, innocent bee.

Now... Killdare was dead. There was no doubt about it. Old Coach Killdare was as dead as a door-nail. At least, for Millie Ostermeyer, when she stumbles onto his corpse, reposing on a piece of maintenance equipment in a dark, odoriferous storage room under the stadium. It's not a pretty sight, prompting Millie to lose her lunch indecorously all over the cleated feet of star quarterback Chase Albright when he rushes toward her screams from the field.

Not that Millicent Ostermeyer is a sports freak who pines after star players or frequents the football field and lockers. She's mostly trying to preserve her reputation as award-winning ace girl reporter for the school paper, thereby beating Vivienne Fitch, her pom-pommed rival, to the scoop of snooping out calamitous cracks in the stadium's concrete supports. Still, gagging and gasping out apologies for barfing on his feet was not exactly the teen flick cute-meet with the gorgeous Chase she would have chosen in her lamest dreams.

Who would kill Coach Killdare?  Almost anyone!  Almost everyone who knew him had a motive. Even Millie's dad, super-upright mayor and assistant coach, has had angry confrontations with him and obviously had his sights set on the job and plush office of head coach. Then there is shamed ex-quarterback Mike Price (and his parents), deprived of a potential free-ride football scholarship, the aforementioned Vivienne Fitch, whose drive to be top of the "pops" has suffered a hit along with her dignity, not to mention the anonymous but mistreated derriere of Buzz the Bee. Plus a whole generation of gym students he had studiously bullied and belittled.

But Millie soon realizes that she has stumbled upon Coach's only supporter, the distant but hunky Chase, whose mysterious senior year appearance at Honeywell High suggests a shady past. Chase admits quietly to Millie than Coach Killdare had offered him a second chance after doing time in a state "boarding school" for juvenile offenders, and that as payback he has been mowing, raking, and taking care of the Coach's dog, not to mention leading the team in a much welcomed winning season.

Despite her worries about his past, Chase does have a key to Killdare's house, and Millie snatches the chance to emulate her childhood idol, Nancy Drew, and do some sleuthing there. Chase feels duty bound to help find the Coach's killer as well, and they agree to snoop together. Millie discovers some "lady stuff" in the bathroom, which means that Coach Killdare must have had at least one other friend, a lady friend, who left him a feminine-scripted and fond note signed "BeeBee." Chase also has an "in" to Killdare's office, located in the men's locker area, and while they are searching his desk and files, they discover the very recently deceased Mike Price, bashed and dumped into the whirlpool tank.

But then someone turns in an anonymous tip to the police that Millie's dad is the murderer and the blunt instrument used is buried in their backyard, where Inspector Lohser and his detectives indeed dig up a large and heavy athletic trophy. Now this case is not just a chance to win another investigative reporting award for Millie. It's her dad, his job, and their life at stake--putting the dead in Millie's deadline for sure.

Beth Fantaskey's forthcoming, Buzz Kill (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014) shows off her rare flair for serio-comic teen romance thriller mysteries, and if there is such a jaw-breaking genre, she's surely its star. After having handled vampire bridegrooms and Dr. Hyde-ish alchemy, (see her earlier Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side, Jessica Rules the Dark Side, and Jekel Loves Hyde, the author jumps into the world of high-school hunks and philosophy-club nerd girl reporters with ease. Chase and Millie find themselves comfortably drawn into detecting and then into romance as the plot progresses, and progress it does, with the surprising identity of the murderer discovered, (where else?) in the locker room. It's not your mother's high school dating novel, but if a double murder mystery can still be light and funny, with some serious back stories and two unlikely but likable sweethearts, Fantaskey's latest certainly makes the team.

Publishers Weekly agrees, awarding it a starred review, and School Library Journal calls it a "character-driven novel... with "cliffhanger chapter endings, a solid mystery with a dollop of romance."

Something Wicked This Way Comes: Illuminate by Aimee Agresti

"Part two of the extravaganza!" cried Joan.

It was the anniversary of the day when I had been found and take to the hospital where Joan was the first to tend to me, to patch up my gashes.

I took the glittering box in my hands and shook it. "So I can open it?"

"You'd better!" said Joan.

I tore at the box and opened it. Its contents sparkled.

"I know you're not into jewelry, my precious little tomboy," she said. "But sixteen is a biggie and I thought you should have something pretty."

I pulled out a necklace, webbing its gold chain around my fingers. It's true, I didn't wear jewelry. But this one already felt different. It wasn't a heart or a dangling birthstone, or any of the typical things I was used to seeing on the girls at school. Instead, this pendant, almost heart-shaped, was something entirely new, a single gold wing, its texture softly rippled to give the illusion of feathers.

Under-the-radar, dorkish high school junior Haven is unbelieving when she and two classmates are selected from their school for a semester-long internship at the Lexington Hotel in downtown Chicago, just refurbished to its art deco Al Capone-age glory. The assembled cadre of young interns and assistants are an incredibly beautiful and aloof group of perfectly turned-out young men and women, presided over by the gorgeous and polished Aurelia, and Haven is bolstered only by the presence of the two other brainy honorees from her school, her best friend Dante, a flamboyant, would-be chef, and occasional classmate Lance, awkward and reserved.

But soon after the new interns are settled in the hotel for their semester, Haven senses something off-kilter in this scene of perfection. Among all the sophisticated and perfectly groomed interns, Aurelia is unusually focused on her and yet somehow off-puttingly manipulative, and when her incredibly handsome assistant Lucian begins to pay romantic attention to her, Haven finds it all hard to believe.

And then, setting up the hotel library, Lance finds a book with her name on the cover and gives it to her, and when she opens it, she finds the pages blank, except for a cryptic, handwritten message on the first page:

I trust you have found the pathway.

You will learn to break rules; your life depends on it. Trust in yourself. Trust in these words, and you will not falter.

Naturally, you will doubt this. Yours is an analytical mind. Take heart, winged one.

One last parting admonition, your necklace has deeper meaning. It defines you.

Haven tries to maintain her own integrity amid the seduction of the flattering attentions of Aurelia and Lucian and struggles to understand and carry out the difficult daily instructions of the mysterious book, orders which lead her into the secret passageways created by Capone's mob beneath the hotel, from which she is able to overhear the evil plans of her boss and the handsome Lucian. Haven is alone is her midnight excursions until she at last confides in Lance, who, it seems, is having parallel experiences, and like her, bears strange scars that warn him of something wicked in their solicitous supervisors. Together they piece together the terrible mission of their mentors--to win their very souls and make them one of them, the Metaphorsofi.

Then Haven opens that mysterious book one morning and finds a terrifying inscription waiting for her:

Haven, you will breathe your last mortal breath on May 27.

Aimee Agresti's forthcoming Illuminate: A Gilded Wings Novel, Book One (Harcourt, 2012) follows both a well-trodden path and forges into some new fantasy territory. For readers who cut their literary teeth on the Harry Potter series, the bare bones of the story will be familiar territory: a lonely young protagonist, a foundling with mysterious scars which burn when evil is near, a sudden and surprising emersion into another realm where the eternal struggle of good and evil is carried out on a grand scale, and a friendship that must stand its own trial by fire before the evil foe is temporarily vanquished--until the next book, that is. All of this is developed in a slow-building storyline in which Agresti ably fleshes out in the detailed setting of a refurbished luxury hotel with seemingly Stepford employees and a dance club with an actual "Ring of Fire" which, we discover, is fed by the eternal fires of the Inferno itself. Just as Harry and his companions grow into their good wizardly powers, so too Haven and Lance discover that they are "angels unaware" and that they must nurture their burgeoning strength even as they prepare for the apocalyptic conclusion of this book, Book One in a planned series.

Such novels, drawing from religious allegory, traditional fantasy, and metafictional realism, have become common, and though they are a genre that is not everyone's cup of, well, potion, they have their following in the many novels featuring vampires, werewolves, faery folk, and, as in this case, angels and devils (cf. even the venerated C. S. Lewis' and Madeline L'Engle's novels), now well represented among books for young adults. While Illuminate: A Gilded Wings Novel, Book One requires a mega-dose of that oft-cited "willing suspension of disbelief" to sustain credibility, Agresti creates plenty of action adventure and a trio of appealing characters which readers will want to revisit in subsequent sequels. As Kirkus Reviews says, "Smart, well-crafted and sophisticated; without a doubt, this belongs on the top of the stack of the current crop of angel books."

Daybust!: Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer

I've been grumpy all day as I waited (unsuccessfully) for Amazon to deliver my preordered copy of Breaking Dawn (The Twilight Saga, Book 4), the long-awaited final book in the saga of the star-crossed lovers, Edward the reluctant vampire and Bella the love-besotted human maiden. Well, judging from early reports of readers who did get their copy, Amazon did me a favor.

Except for a few over-the-top fans who report that they l-o-o-o-ved the book, most of the fan reviews have been dreadful. As I write, the book stands at two-and-one-half stars on Amazon, with only 29 five-star ratings and 59 one-star votes. From the tone of many of those comments, a negative star category would have been appropriate for this one.

Most writers lament the lack of character development in Bella, who apparently has Paris Hilton beat in the shallowness department right through to the end. Then there is the problem of internal consistency with the previous books: authors are free to break the bounds of reality in a fantasy series, but readers have a right to expect that they will keep to the parameters they establish for the fantasy world they create. Apparently, Meyers allowed Bella to become pregnant despite the fact that early on she declared it impossible for vampires to give birth. The final issue that many early commenters shared was the downright creepy resolution of Bella's conflicted affection for Jacob (the werewolf) by having him imprint (i.e, bond as eternal lovers) upon Edward's and Bella's infant girl, improbably named Nessie.

I'm really sorry that the book has been disappointing. Heaven knows, the book business needs a blockbuster just now. Although I found the second and third books a bit tedious, I had hopes that Meyers would take Bella's choice--to chose immortality with Edward or to choose her human soul with its attendant mortality--and deal with it seriously. Bella's conflicted feelings at the end of Book 3 foreshadowed such a direction for the final book.

It looks like Stephanie Meyers was willing to break all her own rules to get to that happy ending. Too bad Romeo and Juliet had that fusty old bard writing their last scene!


Note: FYI: A YouTube video review link in the top five of a Google search triggered my security software, which closed and blocked it immediately.