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Gordon McAlpine

Författare till The Tell-Tale Start

10+ verk 329 medlemmar 17 recensioner

Serier

Verk av Gordon McAlpine

The Tell-Tale Start (2013) 152 exemplar
Once Upon a Midnight Eerie (2014) 38 exemplar
The Pet and the Pendulum (2015) 33 exemplar
Holmes Entangled (2018) 22 exemplar
Mystery Box (2003) 17 exemplar
Joy in Mudville (1989) 3 exemplar
The Persistence of Memory (1998) 2 exemplar
After Oz: A Novel 1 exemplar

Associerade verk

Orange County Noir (2010) — Bidragsgivare — 30 exemplar

Taggad

Allmänna fakta

Kön
male
Nationalitet
USA

Medlemmar

Recensioner

The Pet and the Pendulum is the third and apparently (!) final installment of the Misadventures of Edgar and Allan Poe. I didn't realize it was a trilogy!

In this final tale, villain, Dr. Perry, makes his triumphant return. We learned in the former that he underwent facial reconstruction. The boys are in class, back home in Baltimore, and being given public speaking tips by a guest, Miss Reynolds. They receive a ghostly warning and begin to suspect that maybe their granduncle really was murdered all those years ago. Worse, this means his soul is not at rest. They embark on a mission to help him, clearly heading right into a trap. While dealing with this, they are dealing with the fact that their parents satellite is potentially headed for a crash landing right into earth! Not the typical drama that your average twelve year old has to deal with.

I have to admit that in this book, it seemed to have a different vibe from the first two. It was overly hyped in a Tell Tale Start and Once Upon a Midnight Eerie what a magnificent bond the boys have. But it wasn't really...touched on. Except of course by the professor. There is no wrap up for the Dickinson twins, Em and Milly. I expected more involvement with them, since they are local.

And we were even treated to an explanation of Roderick's eight on his chest. If you're familiar with Poe's works, then that should be a cool nod.

All three books were quick reads, in my opinion. Young readers new to chapter books will find it easy to follow along. Plus it's a good blend of action, mystery, and humor.
… (mer)
 
Flaggad
RayRosa | Apr 15, 2023 |
I loved the metafictional aspect and the way the various narratives intertwined, but it strikes me as such an author's-eye-view of publishing and the editorial process. You know, "I wrote something profound and touching and true, but then the editor forced me to betray my artistic vision and make it crass and commercial!" And I'm not saying this doesn't happen (or that bigotry of various sorts doesn't play into what changes editors demand you make, as it does in this book), but there is here, as there so frequently is in novels about writing/publishing from the writer's perspective, this sense of the editor as a lone malevolent force totally divorced from any company or industry. The editor, it is implied, demands these changes because she herself is a manipulative, grasping, greedy person, not because of any external pressures. (It's interesting to me that this is the case even though she is identified as an associate editor; I don't know about the 1940s, but these days that would almost certainly put her near the bottom of the editorial hierarchy and therefore subject to various diktats from above, to say nothing of the pressures that can come from outside the editorial department--but in novels about writers there never are any other departments, just these mysterious free-floating editors.)

I'm complaining a lot about a book that I mostly enjoyed, and I realize I'm kind of missing the point, but it happened to be a particularly extreme example of the things I frequently find irritating in books about writers.
… (mer)
 
Flaggad
xenoglossy | 4 andra recensioner | Aug 17, 2022 |
Once Upon A Midnight Eerie by Gordon McAlpine is book two in the Misadventures of Edgar and Allan Poe series.
This title picks up right where the first left off. Please read the first if you would like a little background. The author does a good job giving you a little bit of history, but if you want more detail into why the boys are being hunted by their nemesis, start with book one.

Once Upon A Midnight Eerie begins with where a Tell Tale Start concluded. The twin twelve year old boys are offered the chance to star in a film by a Hollywood movie director. Their striking likeness to the great late Edgar Allan Poe wins them this singular title role which they will share. They are staring with another set of twin girls who were cast to play Annabelle Lee. This character is also a shared role and is played by Em and Milly Dickinson. Did the last name give it away? It should have. Em and Milly are the great, great, great, great grandnieces of Emily Dickinson. Right away, they clearly have something in common with the Poe twins. However, unlike the Poe twins, the girls are not one hundred percent identical. There is a difference in the eyes. And the personalities differ as well.

So while working on filming, which is taking place in New Orleans, the boys are taking advantage of being tourists. Being from Baltimore, Maryland, it's undoubtedly been a great traveling road trip for the Poe family. They hit the road to rescue their cat, Roderick and ended up in Kansas. Now they are in Louisiana. So they hop on a double decker bus tour and manage to stick with still deciphering codes, this time from a head stone. It's revealed that there is a ghost tour that they instantly sign up for. From there, the boys launch an investigation into who murdered the poor souls, a hunt for a lost journal, lost treasure, and unveiling a new threat.

All the while, the boys have been receiving new coded messages via license plate from their granduncle, who was demoted from the fortune cookie bureau. But the trick is getting those messages to reach the boys in time to warn them that they are not out of danger just yet.
… (mer)
 
Flaggad
RayRosa | Feb 18, 2022 |
The Tell Tale Start is the opener of the Misadventures of twelve year old twins Edgar and Allan Poe, not just namesakes, but also the great, great, great, great grand nephews of the late and great and spooky Edgar Allan Poe, and also bear a striking resemblance to him as well. Believed to possess above normal intelligence which often leads to them being severely misunderstood, Edgar and Allan are often mixed up in quite a bit of mischief. To their belief, it's all to the good of looking out for their friends and relatives. Orphaned at a young age when their rocket scientist parents are "accidentally" launched into outer-space, the twins are now in the custody of their loving but unassuming aunt and uncle, Judith and Jack. Their parents space tomb can occasionally be seen floating around in space, still in orbit. Shortly before this accident, Mal and Irma gave their twin sons a kitten who they named Roderick Usher. Like his new owners, Roderick also possessed a superb level of intelligence beyond that of the normal feline. He can play statue (dead) and even untie knots! Completely normal stuff. It’s no surprise how dear the cat must be to the Poe family. The boys have been in the custody of their aunt Judith and uncle Jack since their parents tragic accident. So when Roderick disappears, the Poes gas up the family vehicle and head to Kansas to retrieve him, unaware that they are headed for disaster.

Along the way, they attempt to decode secret messages. Identical secret messages. These identical twin boys aren’t just mirror images of one another, afterall. They act, think, eat, breath, smell, and do just about all there is to do the same. They are essentially two boys with one mind!

This was a great introduction into the Misadventures series written by Gordon McAlpine. I sped through the novel and found it to be filled with age appropriate humor. Edgar Allan Poe's involvement cinched it for me. I loved his continual efforts to attempt to get warning messages to his great grand nephews from the great beyond. It was a good story, with the potential to be great. However, when I think about the targeted audience, I feel it was written perfectly to cater to younger age levels.
… (mer)
 
Flaggad
RayRosa | 7 andra recensioner | Feb 18, 2022 |

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Statistik

Verk
10
Även av
1
Medlemmar
329
Popularitet
#72,116
Betyg
½ 3.7
Recensioner
17
ISBN
37

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