Catherine Jinks is the author of the Evil Genius trilogy, The Reformed Vampire Support Group, The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group, and Living Hell, along with many otherbooks for children and adults. She is a three-time winner of the Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year award, and in 2001 she was presented with a Centenary Medal for her contribution to Australian Children's Literature. She lives in Leura, Australia. Visit her website at www.catherinejinks.com.
* "As the complex deceptions that have shaped Cadel's life come to
light, his emotional unraveling and awakening will likely engross
readers."--Publishers Weekly, starred review * "Jinks fills out the
cast with brilliantly conceived friends and adversaries . . . Cadel
rides right up there with Artemis Fowl as a sympathetic
anti-villain."--Kirkus Reviews, starred review
* "Whiplash-inducing suspense writing will gratify fans of Anthony
Horowitz's high-tech spy scenarios."--Booklist, starred review --
With a series of breakneck twists and turns, Jinks's (the Pagan Chronicles) latest novel follows Cadel Piggott, a seven-year-old Australian boy with an incredible mind and a proclivity toward mischief: "He loved systems: phone systems, electrical systems, car engines, complicated traffic intersections." Following a string of disasters, which Cadel engineers (e.g., hacking into the city's power grid), his desperate adoptive parents take him to a psychologist, Dr. Thaddeus Roth. But instead of refocusing Cadel on more positive activities, Dr. Roth encourages the boy to develop increasingly destructive plans, such as orchestrating massive traffic jams and manipulating his classmates' emotions so that they turn on one another. Dr. Roth also stuns Cadel by revealing that he is employed by Cadel's birth father, Dr. Phineas Darkkon, a criminal mastermind serving a life sentence. From prison, Dr. Darkkon established the Axis Institute for the world's genetically talented and criminally inclined. Drs. Roth and Darkkon convince Cadel to join its small freshman class, and Cadel slowly uncovers a conspiracy of lies and betrayals that leave no aspect of his life untouched. Jinks has created an intricate, well-constructed and layered reality in this hefty novel, and as the complex deceptions that have shaped Cadel's life come to light, his emotional unraveling and awakening will likely engross readers. Ages 12-up. (May) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.
Cadel Piggott is a child genius and a handful. Expelled from his fancy school at age seven for computer hacking, his exasperated parents take him to see child psychologist Thaddeus Roth. Cadel’s first shock from Dr Roth is that he’s adopted—and then Roth secretly puts him in contact with his sinister and manipulative birth father, who wants to take full advantage of Cadel’s special skills … There are echoes of Lemony Snicket black humour and Harry Potter school japes, but Evil Genius is for an older audience—the top-secret Axis Institute where Cadel is sent at age 13 to undertake a degree in World Domination is a very different kettle of fish to Hogwarts. As both staff and students at Axis fall prey to assorted gruesome ‘accidents’, Cadel begins to wonder exactly why he’s been placed in the institute. The CBCA and Victorian Premiers’ Award-winning Jinks is a prolific and diverse writer for both children and adults, and Evil Genuis will be another crossover title with a broad potential audience, appealing as much to adults as to teens with a taste for the dark side. It is long, at almost 500 pages, but the short, snappy chapters make it easy to get through. Tim Coronel is AB&P’s editor C. 2005 Thorpe-Bowker and contributors
* "As the complex deceptions that have shaped Cadel's life come
to light, his emotional unraveling and awakening will likely
engross readers."--Publishers Weekly, starred review *
"Jinks fills out the cast with brilliantly conceived friends and
adversaries . . . Cadel rides right up there with Artemis Fowl as a
sympathetic anti-villain."--Kirkus Reviews, starred
review
* "Whiplash-inducing suspense writing will gratify fans of Anthony
Horowitz's high-tech spy scenarios."--Booklist, starred
review --
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