By Jason Pinter
Jason Pinter, $7.99, 245 pages

Zeke Bartholomew: Superspy! finds out that the kid next door is a spy, and decides to do something about it. This thrusts a “medium everything” kid into the world of spies, where he has to quickly learn what it takes to be a spy and then foil a master villain, his lava-powered henchmen, a traitorous junior spy, and an android army with just the good wishes of an actual junior spy and his best friend. Obviously his teachers don’t know this kid very well.

It’s not necessarily a bad book; Zeke just tends to be very scary. Somehow his teachers take his ability to make working contraptions in stride; Zeke takes out a desktop sandwich-crust-cutter and the teacher is more worried about tardiness. Also, the book seems down on pop culture; with an interesting point how the music seems manufactured, even as he uses the numerical sequence from “Lost” as a locker combination. Pinter just seems to be trying too hard. If he would just relax, and let Zeke be who he is, this could even be a fun series.

Jamais Jochim

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