The Ambrose Deception

Middle-schoolers Melissa Burris, Wilf Samson, and Bondi Johnson are not your typical goody-two-shoes academic-scholarship material. Melissa has a thriving business doing other kids' homework, Wilf is not above casual thievery to help him get by, and Bondi's a popular kid who uses his status to shield the less fortunate. But for some reason the three are selected to compete for a ten-thousand-dollar scholarship, a contest requiring them to solve three clues each. Despite being sworn to secrecy, the contestants gradually seek outside help, and then one another's help, as the competition yields more questions than answers-most notably, the questions of what the scholarship has to do with the recent death of prankster billionaire Enoch Ambrose, and why these three were selected as contestants. The clues are tricky enough to be real headscratchers, but as the kids begin to solve ?them, a set of locations in Chicago begins to emerge-complete with secret rooms on the twenty-fourth floor of the Tribune Tower-along with a possible inheritance up for grabs. A puzzle novel with heart, The Ambrose Deception harks back to Raskin's The Westing Game (rev. 8/78) and Balliett's Chasing Vermeer (rev. 7/04) in its devious complexity, but with intriguing contemporary-world connections and a few unique twists of its own. anita l. burkam