Friday Barnes, Danger Ahead

Book six in the Friday Barnes series is just as wacky as the first five books and just as enjoyable to read! This young female sleuth who could give Sheldon Cooper a run for his money when it comes to smarts and personality knows how to logically look at every situation, weed out the distractions, ignore the emotions, and dive straight into the heart of the matter to solve any mystery put before her.  But with this book, author R. A. Spratt places our beloved little crime-solver into some whole new situations that will truly test her mettle!

Danger Ahead does what every book before it has done - it picks up exactly where the previous book ended. Ian Wainscott has just discovered that his father has somehow regained his wealth and status and is whisking his son away to the Cayman Islands for a father/son vacation!  Friday and her faithful sidekick, Melanie Pelly, are there to see Ian off, and when the sleek, new, black car pulls up, Ian gets in and away he goes!  But this is Friday Barnes' world, remember, so everything is not necessarily as it seems.  Mrs. Wainscott soon shows up with Friday's Uncle Bernie, who just so happens to have just gotten married to Ian's mother (huh?), and she grows frantic that her (ex) husband has taken her son out of the country without her permission.  Only, he didn't take him.  They soon discover when Mr. Wainscott calls the school that someone has abducted Ian in order to extort money from the Wainscott family!  The police are their usual useless selves, so it's up to Friday and Melanie to rescue their friend before the trail runs cold.

And to think, all of that happens just within the first six chapters!  So, what, you may ask, is the rest of the book about?  So glad you asked!  Well, it seems the Headmaster at Highcrest Academy is sending the students off to camp to learn survival skills (but more accurately, to simply get them out of his hair for a while!).  Camp Courage is a four-week camp for students to sharpen their wilderness survival skills, and while Friday Barnes may not be much for outdoor / physical activity, she determines to go into the month-long adventure with the expectation that she will broaden her social skills.  Only, it's too bad that Camp Courage isn't about surviving in the wilderness - it's about surviving the mad woman who owns the camp and her punishment-like tasks that force the students to dig latrines, peel potatoes, clean buildings, and a sundry of other non-survival jobs.  But there's something off about the camp.  There's a ghost that haunts the river, and Geraldine warns the students to stay away from the river at night if they know what's good for them!  So, divided into four teams, with camp counselors who act more like lazy teenagers who only want to nap all day, the students find themselves competing not only for the level of cabins they will sleep in each night, but also for their food and other necessities to last the four week.  It's like that TV show, Survivor, only organized by a crazy woman for troubled pre-teens!

Friday certainly has her share of mysteries to solve along the way (if you've read any of the previous books, you'll recall that she solved a number of smaller mysteries while also trying to solve that one big mystery throughout the book).  She uncovers the identity of who mercilessly cut Mirabella's hair while she was napping on the bus ride to the camp.  She finds out who has been eating Jessica's secret stash of cereal that she snuck into the camp.  She discovers what happened to her team's houseboat (which served as their cabin for the month).  And she ultimately finds out the truth behind the so-called ghost and the real reason the counselor are always so tired and so disinterested in helping the students with anything other than keeping out of their way.  It's four weeks of camp like no other (heck, it would probably be easier to survive at Camp Crystal Lake than at Camp Courage! Get it? "Friday"? Camp Crystal Lake? Oh, never mind...), but Friday and her fellow classmates make it out the other side and arrive back at school just in time to find two special guests waiting for Friday - and just wait until you read what these two have to tell her!

There's plenty of fun, plenty of quick-wit, and plenty of laugh-out-loud moments as Friday stops kidnappers, navigates her growing feelings for Ian, and manages to uncover a plot to capture and sell minks for their fur.  A great read that is well worth the time and money!

RATING:  10 exploding ping-pong balls out of 10 for keeping the mysteries coming, filled with light-hearted fun!