I suppose The Genius Files: MIssion Unstoppable will appeal to some core readership. Probably boys who value action over anything else. Dan Gutman has set in motion a kid spy novel series (featuring twin brother, Coke, and sister, Pepsi) that mines the genre thoroughly. Danger? Check. Killers after our heroes? Check. A cross-country adventure? Check. Lame parents who are clueless to the activities of their spy children? Check. An evil villain? Check.
Exhausted by the tropes? Check.
I was hoping for more, particularly since my son recommended this one to me. (He has read the second book in the series, too.) I guess I could not get into Gutman’s style of writing. What hooks me into novels are writing that flows, vocabulary that enhances the storytelling, characters who grow and whom I can believe in, and something that will keep me hooked right the very end. With The Genius Files, I was wondering when the book would end, not what would happen to Coke and Pepsi.
That’s not a good thing to be thinking as a reader.
I did like the geography connections. As the family goes on a cross-country trip in their RV, they take detours to strange places in America (Mom is a blogger who writes about the bizarre tourist sites in the country), and Gutman provides information in the margins of the book on how to use Google Maps to follow the adventure. As Gutman notes in an author’s note, the places referenced in the book are all real places in America. That’s a good point to make for young readers.
Gutman puts out a ton of books and a lot of those books appeal to our boys, so I don’t want to be too harsh here. There is an audience for this kind of book. And I hope that readers of this series will be intrigued enough by the genre to move to other spy novels and other mystery stories, and maybe even other Gutman books. For the reluctant boy reader, The Genius Files might be a hook to keep them reading.
Peace (in the book),
Kevin