Review: compelling mystery
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 6, 2013
Bodies (Staged Fright#1) by Sameer Ketkar is an excellent book.  It caught my attention and would simply not let me put it down.  I ended up staying up until 3AM to finish it.  Not many books these days do that.It is written in first person and the narrator is a young boy who is still in Middle School.  He is from a family of geniuses and attends a school for Advanced and Gifted students although he is just normal.  His is a very diverse family.  His parents both work for the CDC in Atlanta, his sister is especially gifted in science, and his brother began writing music at the age of four.  Neil (Cornelius) finds he is always a second or two behind others in explaining things and feels he always is failing, even though his parents try to help him with that misconception. However, not fitting in is a general feeling for middle school students.  Because of their jobs, their parents are not always there for the kids.  Rachel sells marijuana just for the fun of it and Jack a Lothario with the girls at school.  The murder of Rachel's chemistry teacher by way of a new and nasty chemical bioweapon brings the investigation from a downtown hotel to the kids' prestigious school. An elusive clue feeds the rumor that the chemistry teacher had an affair with one of his students.  As the plot thickens, Neil works his way through the murky waters to the truth.  Now he just has to get someone to listen to him.The erotic scenes and sexy overtones just add to the confusion of the mystery and actually keep it relatively light.  The twists and turns of the characters as they grow through the book are as entertaining as finding out who killed Mr. Poncetti.