Thursday, January 19, 2017

National Parks Mysteries #3 Cliff-Hanger and #4 Deadly Waters

In National Parks Mysteries #3, Cliff-Hanger, the Landons visit Mesa Verde National Park so that Olivia can investigate why a cougar attacked a hiker.  A girl called Lucky is the Landons' latest foster child.  She and Jack grow close while Ashley insists that Lucky cannot be trusted. Ashley believes that Lucky has taken an artifact from the park, which is illegal.  Jack insists that Lucky is telling the truth about not taking the artifact.

The reader can guess what Lucky's mystery is and can see that Ashley is quite insightful while Jack is clueless.

In this book, both Olivia and Lucky have pagers, which are obsolete nowadays.  Even some books from the last 20 years are already quite dated.

I enjoyed the interplay between Jack and Lucky.  Jack has to decide between right and wrong.  Lucky's story is interesting.

I greatly enjoyed this story, and it is my favorite in the series so far.

In National Parks Mysteries #4, Deadly Waters, the Landon family travels to Everglades National Park so that Olivia can investigate why the manatees are dying.  Foster child Bridger, who is set in his western ways, comes along on the trip. When Jack's camera is stolen, the children have no idea that the theft is a clue to what is happening to the manatees.

On page 110, the author gets in a sly reference to National Geographic by having Jack mention that his photos are not quite good enough for the magazine.

I really enjoyed this story.

1 comment:

Michael Nabholz said...

Cliff Hanger is the first of the series that I read, before a trip to Mesa Verde.
Reading it before the trip was a good introduction to the park,
and re-reading the park-specific parts after the trip made them more real.
The other somewhat obsolete technology in the book is the use of phone cards.