Lawless

Gr 5–7—The Lawless School is an ultrasecret training academy for budding master criminals. Twelve-year-old M Freeman, named for her late father, a criminal legend, is whisked off to the school in a private jet, with a crack team of Lawless's highly disciplined archenemies in hot pursuit. After settling in and establishing her reputation as a bold but untamed thief, M leads a class project that will serve as an audition for the Masters, an elite society founded by her father. Her team will steal a lesser-known Rembrandt painting from a London gallery. The story resonates strongly with echoes of the Harry Potter books, particularly the Snape backstory, and is sprinkled with allusions to a range of thrillers, notably The Da Vinci Code and the film The Thomas Crown Affair. Well researched, it even offers a fair amount of art history (some of it spurious), deftly woven into an elaborate plot tying together 17th-century physicist Christian Huygens and Georgian-era celebrity thief Jonathan Wild-not to mention a car chase, a kidnapping, a doomsday plot, highly sophisticated technologies, whipsawing betrayals, and a cascade of discomfiting revelations about M's parents. Despite occasionally clunky dialogue and a few more-than-ordinarily preposterous details in the plot, Lawless is fast moving and fun.—Bob Hassett, Luther Jackson Middle School, Falls Church, VA