Furious Jones and the Assassin's Secret

by Tim Kehoe

Simon and Schuster, 2014. 325 pgs. Mystery

Furious Jones has good reason to be furious. His mother has recently been killed in what was supposed to have been a "wrong time, wrong place" drive by shooting in Galena, Ohio, and when he goes to see his father give a lecture, his dad is gunned down in front of him. Furious actually got his name as a baby when he was born swinging and punched the doctor in the face, but now he is both frightened and angry because everyone he loves has been taken from him, and he is on the run from everyone because he doesn't know whom to trust. Furious Jones and the Assassin's Secret not only strains credibility, it rips it to shreds and stomps on it: could a great group of people in the witness protection program really all be safely relocated to the same small town? and if those people started dying, one after the other, in gruesome "accidents," wouldn't everyone else want to get out of town? and could a twelve-year-old boy really outwit and outrun the full resources of the FBI? Still, Furious is a fine young man in a bad spot and no matter how often you think "huh?!" while you are reading, you keep on going to find out what happens, which itself is pretty strange. An excellent book for young people (6th grade and up) who enjoyed Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider series.

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