The Secret of the Skeleton Key

June 20, 2011
This by-the-numbers launch to Warner's (The Mystery of the Haunted Caves) Code Busters Club series introduces four seventh graders who enjoy communicating via various codesâincluding American Sign Language, Morse code, and a mathematical cipherâthat are incorporated into the novel and translated in its back matter. Code devotees may find this engaging, but the conceit adds little to this mystery, which involves a sudden fire that destroys a neighborhood hermit's house and a bizarre couple claiming to be his relatives, who the club members assume are searching for the man's buried treasure. In the neighbor's burnt-out house, the young sleuths find cluesâwritten in code, of courseâthat lead them to the hermit's will and help them foil the villains' plans. Characterizations are thin, and the book's humor, often of a mildly scatological variety, misses the mark. Laborious detail, repetition, and stilted dialogue slow the pace, and contemporary references to C.S.I., Hurricane Katrina, and text message lingo aren't enough to keep this series from feeling dated out of the gate. Ages 8â12.

September 1, 2011

Gr 3-5-This pedestrian mystery involves four kids who form a club based on their mutual enjoyment of riddles, puzzles, and secret codes. When one of their elderly neighbors acts weirdly, the kids realize that he has left a semaphore code on his bedroom window, asking for help. Two cheesy relatives are trying to kill him for his fortune. The children get involved and, by decoding a number of messages, are able to rescue him. Readers may enjoy solving the coded chapter titles as well as those that the children have to figure out. However, there is no character development, and the bad guys are stock figures who are more laughable than sinister. Most readers will find the solution to the mystery ridiculously obvious.-B. Allison Gray, Goleta Public Library, CA

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