The GEEKs work together, using their individual talents and deductive reasoning skills to unravel the mystery. Gina hopes that deciphering the clues and finding the missing fortune will be just the thing to revitalize the down-on-its-luck town and bring the Elmwood Tribune back into the black, saving her mom’s job and Gina’s passion project. She and science-minded prankster Elena Hernández, theater kid Edgar Feingarten, and driven math genius Kevin Robinson decide to get to the bottom of things when they learn that the Van Houten Toy & Game Company heir made elaborate plans to leave everything to the town of Elmwood before her death-but only if a member of the community could solve an intricate multistep puzzle. When an unbelievable scoop comes her way, Gina must rely on her tightknit crew of sixth grade best friends whose initials happen to spell GEEK, a label they choose to proudly reclaim.

Can Coop and his friends clear Gramps’ name in time-or is everything he thought he knew a lie?Ī group of bright friends tackles the puzzle of their lives.Įlmwood, New Hampshire, 11-year-old Gina Sparks is small in stature but big on reporting ongoing dramas for the local newspaper with support from her journalist mom. How could he have known his grandmother was the heiress to a shipping fortune? That his grandfather jilted his high school sweetheart when he returned from college? That Gramps’ lifelong injunctions against drinking and gambling are rooted in practice, not principle? Coop’s narration, playful language, nuanced characters, intricate plotting, and a bittersweet conclusion help transform a slow-as-molasses whodunit into a race against the clock. As evidence stacks up, Coop reckons with revelations that rattle his family’s history. A few days before seventh grade begins, a playground renovation disinters the earthly remains of Tabby Goodman, Coop’s grandmother, who allegedly skipped town four decades earlier, and shatters the small town’s idyllic peace.

(Despite the setting and several Civil War references, race plays no part in the story, and all characters are assumed white.) Now 13, Coop spends most of his time with best friends Justice and Liberty, brother-and-sister twins whose parents co-own A Latté Books, Windy Bottom’s only bookstore/cafe, with Coop’s mother. Harley Goodman, in bucolic Windy Bottom, Georgia. A middle-grade mystery set in the American South serves up murder and mayhem with a side of hot mustard.Īfter his Marine hero father died five years ago, Cooper Steven Goodman and his mother, Delilah, took up residence with his paternal grandfather, Dr.

Coop knows the scoop