Thursday, May 31, 2012

The Dead of Night

The Dead of Night by Peter Lerangis

The 39 Clues: Cahills Vs. Vespers
Book 1: The Medusa Plot
Book 2: A King's Ransom
And now… Book 3: This series most resembles a juggling act. One author leaves all of her clubs in the air and the next author steps in, catches them, finishes her trick and begins his own. Of course, he must pass off his trick to the next author in the lineup. Somehow the collective manages to keep the trick going, seamlessly, while adding balls of various sizes and weights, watermelons, knives, flaming torches and even some hamsters. Just watch…

Multiple plots are at work here. Amy and Dan are the driving characters of the primary story. Their main goal is to rescue the seven Cahill hostages* being held at an undisclosed location. To achieve this goal, they have**. Unfortunately, Amy and Dan are at the beck and call of Vesper 1*** and must focus on their secondary goal – keep the hostages alive until extraction. Most recently, they have been joined by Atticus, Dan’s online buddy, and Atticus’ older brother Jake****.
As the list of players gets longer and longer, so does the list of artifacts, codes, maps, cities and ingredients. The ingredients… Dan is secretly collecting to produce the Super Serum salvaged during the 39 Clue’s Hunt. The artifacts and maps… demanded to be discovered, uncovered, by Vesper 1 towards an unknown end. The cities… a list provided by Amy and Dan’s dead lawyer, but why is it so important that it is the last piece of communication they receive from him? They have enough on their plate so it is time to call in *****

*The seven hostages are trying to escape their prison even as the Cahills are trying to break in. Luckily, fast-thinking nannie Nellie manages to sneak a clue past their captors to aid the outside Cahills in locating their area of confinement.
**Sinead, Ian and Evan at the Grace Cahill Mansion Replica, aka Research Headquarters. These three are using the vast system of Cahill Operatives to discover the location of the hostages for immediate extraction. They are analyzing all clues available to narrow in on the hostages’ position. Unfortunately, the tensions between the former enemies and lately new friends are rising. Sinead is overly security conscious. Evan still doesn’t quite understand how dangerous being a Cahill is. And someone else is rebelling ******.

***The Vespers: There are at least 3 and maybe 4 Vesper subplots alone. Vesper 1, an unknown person, seems to be running the whole show. Twins, Casper and Cheyenne work for him when they are in good standing with him or against him when they have attracted his wrath. So either they are doing what they are told, or they are trying to off the Cahill siblings. A newly revealed Vesper has the job of keeping the Cahills out of trouble so that they can complete Vesper 1’s tasks.
****Atticus and Jake Rosenbloom are my favorite addition to the series. Atticus is the last known Guardian –still aren’t entirely sure what that is. As his mother lay dying, she passed on limited information to Atticus including that he should keep Dan as a friend. So while Atticus adores Dan, Jake is suspicious of the Cahill siblings. After all, they are felons wanted by Interpol. Jake also provides romantic tension for Amy and conflict for Amy’s high school boyfriend, the above Evan.

*****Jonah and Hamilton who travel to Pompeii under Amy’s orders to see if they can discover not only the importance of the list of cities, but also the importance of Pompeii to the Cahills. It is the site of the very first “test” that occurred in conjunction with the eruption of Vesuvius.
******Ian runs off to join his fiendish mother, Isabel Kabra. Who is he loyal to? Who is he protecting? Can he be trusted? Will he return? We all have to wait for the next pass off - I mean book.

There now. You are as thoroughly dizzy as I am.

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