Friday, September 29, 2006

What Mrs. N's Been Reading

Just finished Michael Simmons' Finding Lubchenko. It's the story of Evan Macalister, son of an older, widowed, multi-millionaire pharmaceutical business owner. Dad doesn't think kids should be handed everything so he keeps a pretty tight rein on Evan. To get the money that he thinks he's entitled to, Evan steals office equipment from dad's company and sells it on-line. Suddenly, dad is arrested for murder in what appears to be part of a larger deal involving illegal sales of smallpox virus. Evan has the dead man's laptop, which could help free his father, but that would expose his theft scheme, so Evan and 2 friends set out to find a man known only by the name Lubchenko, mentioned in e-mails on the stolen laptop. I really wanted to dislike this book at first, because of Evan entitlement attitude, but it was actually a pretty good book. If you're looking for a lot of action, this book may not be for you. But it is a very good character study as you get to know some of the background about Evan's dad and their prior relationship. And even though Evan is still a spoiled rich kid, you see that he has a lot of universal teen issues that are played out nicely. One thing I really did like about the book, was that it didn't have a sugary ending, and it could very easily have gone that way. The ending, although leaving some unanswered questions, was believable.

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