The Name of this Book is Secret is a great read. It is the first in the series. It’s a familiar blend of literary elements reminiscent OF Lemony Snicket’s Unfortunate Events and the Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians series. It is a mystery-adventure that is out right hilarious; and it’s not afraid to make fun of itself or it’s genre.
The unknown narrator of the book is author Pseudonymous Bosch. A clear suspect emerges by the end of the story as to whom the author is meant to be. The narrator’s voice and personality remind me very much of Lemony Snicket. Bosch cautions his readers against going further, tries to get out of writing chapters and bemoans circumstances at every turn. Bosch is also very secretive, as evidenced by the book’s title.
The narrator also reminds me of Alcatraz (who is the really author of his book series, not that silly Brandon Sanderson who keeps claiming to have written the series). Like Alcatraz, Bosch is very snarky and clever. Bosch will often sum up slow moving moments to keep the story moving quickly.
Here’s the blurb from the paperback’s back cover:
This is a story about a secret, but is also contains a secret story.
When adventurous detectives Cass, an ever-vigilant survivalist, and Max-Ernest, a boy driven by logic, discover the Symphony of Smells, a box filled with smelly vials of colorful ingredients, they accidentally stumble upon a mystery surrounding a dead magician’s hidden diary and the hunt for immorality.
Filled with word games and anagrams and featuring a mysterious narrator, this is a book that won’t stay secret for long.
I have long been a fan of secret codes and secret clubs and spy like stuff. I even had a couple kid spy books when I was a kid, all about making your own codes and using lemon juice and light bulbs to send and decoded invisible messages. Granted I didn’t have a lot of friends into that so I was a lonely spy. :(
Back to Secret. There is a significant amount of action for a pair of 11-year-old detectives who are initially bigger talkers than doers. The friendship that develops between these two loners rang true for me, since I’ve often thought I was an outsider most of my childhood.
One of things I like about this book is similar to why I liked my last book reviewed; and that is the clear delineation between the good guys and the bad guys, in several cases good girls and bad girls. Sure there are twisty, sneaky characters that fool our protagonists one way or another, but those characters have clear loyalties when revealed. (In any spy or mystery book, you have to assume that some characters are going to turn out to be not what they seem.)
Ms. Mauvais and Dr. L are clearly the evil antagonists from the moment our young detectives lay eyes on them. Well, at least from Cass’ point of view.
The folks who “help” Cass and Max-Ernest are not exactly forthcoming, but what do you expect from a paranoid secret society trying to stop a secret evil society from discovering the secret of immortality?
The descriptions and settings are wonderfully described. Chapter illustrations are humorous and chapter titles are often a summary. But a mysterious kind of summery.
In the end, I also like the lessons the characters learn, apart from when the kids learn how to lie convincingly to their parents. (They do get in trouble but not with their parents, so they pretty much get away with lying, which is so common in kid adventure stories, because as we all know, responsible adults would never let kids have real adventures and if parents ever found out about said adventures, no more would take place.)
There are some good values about teamwork, perseverance, friendship, and the dangerousness secrets. The fact that the bad characters are seeking immortality also causes the reader to think seriously about such a prospect. If there was a secret to immortality, would you want to discover it?
I for one am happy I will live one life, however short or long God deems, and will join my Savior in heaven after I die.
But I’m real and this book was fiction. Still it made me think.
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