Perry Stormaire's Night Out: Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick by Joe Schreiber

If you had one day left to live, how would you spend it and why? (University of Southern California essay prompt)

I could see over the edge now, looking down. "I'm not jumping!" I shouted.

"Then you will die."

I nodded to the gaping hole in the forty-seventh floor. "How is this not dying?"

Gobi gave me another nudge toward the edge and for a second I actually felt the vacuum of space itself sucking me outward.

Outside the building, a high-pitched turbine whine thundered up into view and that was when I saw the helicopter.

"Get ready!" Gobi shouted. The helicopter tilted toward us, lowering.

Gobi grabbed me and jumped.

Not since Ferris Beuhler took a senior skip day or Tom Cruise's Joel borrowed his dad's Porsche for a day of Risky Business has a high school senior had such a fantasy fugue as good kid Perry Stormaire, whose big night out as unwilling prom escort for his family's nerdy Lithuanian exchange student turns into the wildest chase script ever.

It's the worst prom date fix-up in history. Gobi, smudged glasses and all, appears, dressed for the date, in a heavy brown wool peasant costume, carrying a huge matching canvas purse. "Is traditional Lithuanian ceremonial costume," Gobi explains, as Perry cringes in his rented tux.

But Gobi persuades Perry that what she really wants is not a spin around the dance floor, but a whirl around New York City, and soon the terminally dorky Gobi morphs into the hottest ninja chick of them all, one on a mission to avenge her sister's death at the hands of five human traffickers, all of whom are in New York on that one night. From a nightmare date in a peasant costume to a stiletto-heeled, gun and knife-toting assassin babe, Gobi is an action figure come alive to shake up Perry's pedestrian sojourn on the waitlist at Columbia on the road to recapitulating his father's life.

Dodging bullets (and catching a few), Perry and Gobi careen through midnight Manhattan streets in his dad's Jaguar, outrunning thugs and escaping various slaughter scenes--even one with a rampant bear. Gobi's quick weapon-wielding secret agent moves finish off three of her hotlisted honor killings, but the last two come hard, and the two are captured, held in chains in a basement in Brooklyn, finally escaping only to end up in Perry's father's office, where, just ahead of the police SWAT team, Gobi finds her final target, the head of his father's law firm herself.

By the time Joe Schrieber's forthcoming Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick (Houghton Mifflin, 2011) concludes with a blast, one which flattens the Stormaire house and implodes Perry's plans for an unruffled transition to adult life, the reader is cheering for Gobi and rejoicing in Perry's metamorphosis into a guy finally taking his fate into his own hands. Schreiber gleefully juxtaposes top-tier college application essay prompts as chapter heads with the kaleidoscope of experiences hurtling toward the reader and giving the initially predictably prosaic Perry a radically new world view, one in his old life is literally and figuratively blown away, and he sees that there are many possible lives ahead of him. It's quite a ride, one that is hard to put down, as fast-paced as a car chase down Broadway, a serio-comic joyride of a novel that will leave readers waiting to exhale.

Getting into His Game? Game Over, Pete Watson by Joe Schreiber

On the Saturday morning that I almost triggered the end of the world, I woke up early. I was excited for three reasons:

1) No school.
2) Mom and Dad would be at Dad's company softball game, which meant that I would have the house to myself all day.
3) BRAWL-A-THON 3000 XL!!!!

It's launch day for the upgrade sequel to Pete's favorite video game of all time (way ahead of Mr. Thumb Goes to Market or even Unicorn Zombies.)

And Pete's got the wherewithal to have it, $49.99, all saved up in his change jar. All he's got to do is pedal down to Ready Player One, and he's set to spend the rest of the day being the first in his school to log some levels battling the MechReatures. See, in the new version, time not only flows back and forward, but sideways, and.... well, you get the picture.

Except there's an ominous yellow sticky note at the bottom of the jar:

Pete:

I.O.U. $20.00.

Love You!
Mom

Pete's perfect plan is $20 short. How can he make twenty bucks fast? He rummages under the sofa cushions, but only comes up with three nickels and a fat black marker, but then he trips over a pizza box beside the trash can--and gets a winning entrepreneurial idea.

With the new-found marker Pete makes a sign on the back of the pizza box and soon is ensconced by the garage door, with a slightly confusing sign advertising HUG GARAGE SALE TODAY! Pete pulls out some of the stuff hiding under a tarp in the garage--a treadmill, a soda machine Dad got for Christmas one year, skis, an old TV, and his dad's dusty old boyhood game--THE COMMANDROID 85 VIDEO ARCADE SYSTEM. Pete is sure he'll make enough long green to be gaming by noon.

But sales are nil until a van with a giant bug on top pulls up. The cheerful, orange-overalled Bug Man jumps out, and looks around. His eyes bulge slightly when he spots the Commandroid. "It's a collector's item," Pete points out, hopefully. Pete makes an easy sale and heads to the mall with his moola.

And that's when the game goes to a whole new level.

Pete arrives at the Ready Player One, only to see his father stepping out of a long black car and demanding to know what he did with the Commandroid. And before Pete can come up with even a lame response (What is this Commandroid?"), two guys in black suits jump out of another black car, throw his dad into the back seat, and speed away.

It's game on, as Pete, with the occasional help of his dorky sometimes best-friend Wesley Midwood and Wes's extremely attractive older sister Callie, realizes that he has to right this wrong. Pete discovers that his dad, actually a CIA operative under deep cover , has been using the apparently low-tech Commandroid to communicate with the CIA chief and has been changed into an 8-bit 1980s game character and inserted into the game by a nefarious gamemeister who plans to use the code to rule, or, failing that, to destroy the world. There's just one chance to restore Dad and save the world: Pete Watson, boy gamer, is charged by none other than the President himself to go into the 8-bit universe to release the code to destroy the Bug Man's virus.

I locked eyes with Callie. "Shoot me!"

That was when she pointed the digitizer at me, closed her eyes, and pulled the trigger.

The first thing that I discovered after Callie shot me was that being inside a video game is a lot less fun than being outside one.

The lines of code were closing in around me and tightening like a net.

Author Joe Schreiber, noted for his techno-comic guy sagas, has in his forthcoming Game Over, Pete Watson (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014),  a middle-school version of the protagonists in his top-selling young adult techno adventures such as Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick. Pete Watson self-narrates this sci fi spy story as if writing the script for his own video game, aided and abetted by the comic pixelated illustrations of artist Andy Rash, and in Pete and his chubby co-nerd, Wesley, author Schreiber has the perfect characters for more middle-school X-Men-type adventures. Wesley, a.k.a. Mount Flabmore among his circle of gamers, is the perfect comic sidekick, his plunking at the rubber bands on his braces hopefully providing the appropriately twangy sound track to their future adventures. Game on, Pete!

Everyones' a Con Artist: Con Academy by Joe Schreiber

Andrea comes up behind where I'm standing and reaches around me to the map of the South Pacific. "Here?" she says. I nod.

"It's so tiny."

"Just a speck," I say.

"Like it's hardly there at all," she says. "Look, Will. Here's the thing. Your whole life story...? I don't buy a word of it.

I don't think you've even seen South Pacific, let alone actually lived there." She's smiling widely as she glances back at the photo on my desk. "And if this photo was taken anywhere besides Florida, I'll eat it."

"The people from my village...," I say, lowering my gaze. "They warned me that there would be those who didn't understand."

"Oh, please, she says. "Give it a rest."

Andrea Defresne gets it that Will has forged and hacked his way into a scholarship to the gold-plated halls of Connaughton Academy, the zenith of WASP aspirations for the privileged teen. Nailed, Will confesses all. "Your secret is safe with me," promises Andrea, with a Giaconda smile.

But during the night Will Shea is wakened by a campus security guy followed by a distinguished-looking guy in a rich burgundy robe with the Academy logo, declaring that he is Dr. Melville, headmaster, brandishing a sheaf of papers stamped New Jersey Department of Human Services in front of Will, a.k.a. Billy Humbert, with a two-year-old photo of a surly Billy paper-clipped on top. It seems Will's scholarship scam has been busted, and he is forced to take advantage of his first floor dorm room window and take it on the lam. But on the hike to the bus station, he's offered a ride by his English teacher who chattily tells Will that he's not the only poor orphan on scholarship at the Academy. The other student's name, interestingly, is Andrea Dufresne. Instantly Will sees that he, the scion of several generations of grifters, has almost been out-scammed by Andrea and a couple of guys who owe her a favor. But two can play that game, and Will heads back to the Academy to confront Andrea.

"I'll tell the real Dr. Melville what I know about you," I say. "And we'll both end up doing senior year in public school. It looks like we're stuck with each other."

"No." Andrea settles into her swivel chair and smiles. "Because you're right about one thing, Will. There isn't room in this school for both of us. And I was here first."

GAME ON.

Then some painful run-ins with the cruel retail heir Brandt Rush, Big Jerk on Campus, cause Will's bunco DNA to kick in, and he's just itching to take the insufferable Brandt down and bolster his own bank account as well.

And like Brandt's over-stuffed family money vault, Will's got family resources to fall back on, too, in the personages of his Great-Uncle Roy, grifter extraordinaire, and his dad, a great conman when he's not drinking, and a pretty good one even when he is. Will and Co. come up with a two-million-dollar on-line poker caper to suck in Brandt Rush's long green. Brandt Rush has his dirty tricks, too, with a minion texting winning poker plays and Andrea as head of his A-Team, but thanks to Will's new library geek girlfriend Gatsby, he's got the goods on the the headmaster, Dr. Melville, whose father had apparently bribed his dubious scholar son into Connaughton Academy with the gift of a beautifully faked Gutenberg Bible. With what he's got on the headmaster and on Andrea Dufresne, Will thinks he's holding all the winning cards.

But it seems everybody is a con in Joe Schreiber's latest, the aptly named Con Academy (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015). Compared to the rest of the players, the author manages to make his seventeen-year-old Sundance Kid a sympathetic character, and his salty cast of assorted scammers move briskly through a labyrinthine storyline in which everyone winds up both a winner and a loser. Despite its overlapping confidence games, Con Academy is a page-turning uproarious romp for young adult readers.

Joe Scheiber is also the author of another picaresque couple of novels about a loose-cannon rogue teen character who runs afoul of international counterspies in Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick and sequel, Perry's Killer Playlist. (See my reviews here.)

We've Got to Stop Meeting Like This: Perry's Killer Playlist by Joe Schreiber

"I think we should celebrate." Armitage signaled the waiter."Villa Antinori, 'ninety-five."

Armitage turned turned the full wattage of his attention on me. "Perry, I realize all of this must feel like it's happening very quickly, but by now you must know how much I love your music, and I think it's time we discuss Inchworm's first album. I'd like to get you into the studio as soon as this tour is over. How does that sound?"

"Like a dream come true."


"Wonderful." Armitage glanced at Paula. "Make a note to book some time at Sunset Sound, love, won't you?"

"Taking care of it now," Paula said, taking out her iPad.

"That settles it, then," Armitage said, raising a toast. "Here's to Inchworm and the great future that awaits them."

I reached for my glass, and that was when I saw Gobi coming through the crowd, walking straight toward us with the shotgun.

Perry Stormaire's dreams tend to switch into nightmare scenarios whenever Gobi turns up. He's met a gorgeous blonde, the twenty-something Paula with glitzy connections to the music industry and an inexplicable attraction to eighteen-year-old Perry. Suddenly his garage band Inchworm is whisked to Venice to begin a European tour and rock 'n' roll stardom beckons. Perry can't believe his luck.

But since that explosive prom night-mare when the dorky Lithuanian exchange student Gobi morphed into an iconic ninja assassin taking vengeance upon the human traffickers who killed her sister, Perry can't quite get Gobi out of his mind, and when in Venice he remembers Gobi's promise to meet him someday at Harry's Bar, he decides to drop in on the way to the band's hotel. Like horror moviegoers  who want to shout, "Noooo! Don't go down into that dark cellar....," fans of the viginal Perry can't help knowing what's going to follow when he drifts into that bar... and of course, they are not disappointed.

When Gobi makes her well-armed re-entrance into Perry Stormaire's life, the reader is off on a roller-coaster fiction ride that reads like the script for an action movie with short chapters like quick cuts that take our unlikely everyteen hero through an explosive plot, filled with speedboat chases through Venitian canals, helicopter drops, exploding safe houses, and foreign agents licensed to kill.  It all culminates in an unwanted encounter with the spy-running Kaya, the CIA operative who is willing to sacrifice even Perry's family to finish off his enemies, using Gobi as a robotic killer to make the kill. Perry realizes that he was the pawn Paula and Armitage used to lure Gobi and kill her off, and  when discovers that Gobi is killing off Kaya's enemies because the CIA has promised treatment to her for a brain tumor that could soon take her life, he realizes he has only once choice.

Fans of the cinematographic first  book, Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick, (see my review here) know to expect a script of non-stop surprises and transitions, shadowy characters, and shifting roles between good guys and bad guys which flash by like an action flick in a darkened theatre.

Joe Scrieber's forthcoming installment, Perry's Killer Playlist (Houghton Mifflin, 2012), delivers a killer-diller-thriller, plot-driven, extreme spy adventure, with characters just a bit more realistic than the cast of the latest Batman movie and with short chapters headed up by a soundtrack of Perry's playlist of songs. With a dark European setting that culminates with an epic Armageddon at the top of the Eiffel Tower, Perry's big adventures continue with a tantalizing conclusion that doesn't promise much of a breather for unwilling secret agent Perry Stormaire.

"... nonstop action, romantic intrigue, and everyteen haplessness on Perry’s part remains an incendiary combination, says Publishers Weekly.