Fallout

July 1, 2002
\deflang1033\pard\plain\f3\fs24 Reviewed with other titles in the Wessex Papers series.

Gr. 8-12. Unlike many paperback teen series titles that feature a self-contained story in each volume, the Wessex Papers series uses three volumes to tell one long, involved mystery. The first volume, \plain\f3\fs24" Trust Falls, \plain\f3\fs24 uses a lot of pages to introduce the main characters, including Sunday Winthrop (old-money rebel) and Fred Wright (middle-class rebel), and the complex social world of the ultrasnobbish Wessex Academy. Things pick up in \plain\f3\fs24" Fallout\plain\f3\fs24, in which Sunday and Fred reveal their feelings for one another and discover an extortion scheme that reaches to the upper levels of the school administration. In the final volume, Sunday and Fred unmask the blackmailers and make their school more fair and just. Of course, most mysteries are fewer than 750 pages, and the story gets rather messy and convoluted in places. Yet many young readers will find a thrill in the vicarious plunge into the world of Wessex Academy, where the students indulge in all sorts of teenage vices (including some nonexplicit sex and drug and alcohol use) and sneak around the campus at night in their underwear and J. Crew pajamas. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)