Abstract
Reviewed by: Max Cassidy: Escape from Shadow Island Elizabeth Bush Adam, Paul . Max Cassidy: Escape from Shadow Island. Walden Pond/Harper Collins, 2010. 295p. ISBN 978-0-06-186323-3$16.99 R Gr. 5-8 Renowned escapologist "Alexander the Great" Cassidy disappeared after his last show at the toney Playa d'Oro resort in the fictional country of Santo Domingo, and his wife, convicted by a corrupt court, is in jail for his murder. Their son, fourteen-year-old Max, has been training to follow his father's profession since he was a toddler, and now he musters all his skills to discover the truth behind his father's disappearance and to prove his mother innocent. A man who claims to have information visits Max after a performance, but he's murdered before he can discuss the matter in detail. With only a string of eight numbers taped inside the would-be informant's wig as a clue, Max and Consuela, Max's assistant and guardian, head down to Santo Domingo to search for enough new evidence to reopen the case. Consuela disappears, Max is stonewalled by local authorities, and his best guess is that each thread of the mystery is somehow tied to Isla de Sombra—Shadow Island—once a pirate fortress turned prison, now owned by wealthy recluse Julius Clark. When Max makes his way onto the island, he discovers not only some hint of his father's fate but also Clark's involvement in testing an experimental drug on captured victims, which is vaguely but menacingly connected with global environmental threats. Adams plunges straight into the action and barely comes up for air, rapidly dishing up all the gunfire, narrow escapes, and pyrotechnics that adventure hounds savor. He's also a deft hand at setting, creating in the bogus Central American country a nation so thoroughly corrupt and evil as to be a character in its own right. With two more titles in the works, readers will be darn glad Max's quest for justice is still a long way from over. Copyright © 2010 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
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