“The Maze of Bones”, by Rick Riordan

Book #1 of the series “The 39 Clues”.

Fast-paced, enjoyable.  The old and rich Grace Cahill dies and leaves an improbable will letting her relatives join a mystery clue-chase.  Her young favourites, Amy and Dan, join the chase and are competing against other relatives who are willing to set fires and detonate bombs to get ahead.  Nobody dies, but the violence is more than I would like.

There’s plenty of history, for example, about Benjamin Franklin, which as far as I know is accurate.  It makes sense and is needed in the narrative, in a way that will make kids remember it, I believe.

Rick Riordan wrote the “Percy Jackson” series, which my son enjoyed.  I like the fact that the books in this series will be written by different authors that I like; that will be enough to keep me reading through them.