A Copycat Conundrum

November 15, 2024
A squad of young crime fighters sniff out art thieves and hidden treasure in this second round of high-tech, pastry-fueled sleuthing. Challenges practically drop into the laps of Olive Cobin Zang and her four companion Misfits, even as a string of ominous messages a worried classmate receives lead to a tangle of mysteries. They involve old tales of a lost ship filled with gold and valuable Chinese artifacts, oddly localized earthquakes linked to bank and other heists, and hints that treasures in a San Francisco art museum are being surreptitiously switched out for fakes. In an urgently paced plot delivered with tongue-in-cheek twists aplenty, Yee sends her eager investigators scurrying into crime scenes and hidden rooms, with occasional quick breaks to plan or compare notes over treats from the Butter Bakery. A climactic Mission: Impossible-style museum break-in requires all of Olive's unusual acrobatics skills. The classic denouement she delivers dressed (appropriately) as Miss Marple leads to a brief high-speed chase as a culprit tries to escape in an Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. Readers are treated to a whirl of revelations and golden discoveries, and throughout they'll be swept along, both by the breathlessly paced developments and by the individually awkward but collectively unstoppable team leading the racially diverse cast. Final art not seen. Nonstop action, delivered with a wink. (agent profiles, gadget profiles)(Adventure. 8-12)

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

December 1, 2024
Grades 4-7 Readers who enjoy art-heist mysteries will find an unusual one in Yee's latest middle-grade novel. Yee, whose Maizy Chen's Last Chance (2022) was a Newbery Honor Book, began The Misfits series earlier this year with the publication of A Royal Conundrum (2024), a mystery-action thriller in which an unlikely group of five somewhat awkward but tech-savvy classmates learn that their arts-themed boarding school, located on an island in San Francisco Bay, actually trains teams of its students to become highly skilled crime-fighting units. Now, responding to a plea from another student, Olive Zang rounds up her group, the Misfits, for an investigation that takes them into San Francisco, where strong but highly localized earthquakes are creating chaotic diversions from thefts taking place nearby. Santat's occasionally abstract illustrations appear at intervals and create a rather dark, menacing atmosphere, which is offset by the more hopeful tone of Olive's first-person narrative. The pace quickens and tension mounts as the story unfolds, with memorable action scenes as well as some surprising revelations and plot twists along the way.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

March 1, 2025
In the first installment of this series (A Royal Conundrum, rev. 1/24), twelve-year-old Olive Cobin Zang arrived at the Reforming Arts School near San Francisco. Eventually, the lonely homebody found her place as part of a diverse group of friends who dubbed themselves the Misfits. Now, the Misfits -- undercover operatives for the secret agency NOCK -- are swept into a new mystery. Their classmate Zeke has been receiving threatening messages, and seemingly random events -- e.g., earthquakes, a runaway cable car, bank robberies, the discovery of an old bunker under the school -- turn out to be connected. Santat's black-and-white illustrations (final art not seen) lend a visual element to Yee's conversational prose. Despite its high-tech gadgetry, this is an old-fashioned adventure tale with a pleasingly complicated mystery and a tremendously likable cast of sleuths (and even some Miss Marple allusions). As this installment concludes, Olive runs off to join her friends on a new escapade. Back matter includes agent and gadget profiles. Dean Schneider

(Copyright 2025 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)