Samantha Spinner and the Super Secret Plans: 04/02/21

Samantha Spinner and the Super Secret Plans by Russell Ginns is set in Seattle and involves a worldwide caper and a search for a missing, presumed dead, uncle. While Samantha's sister receives an incredible amount of money, and her brother receives a baseball team, she is given an umbrella with holes.

Samantha, though, has a head for puzzles and eventually figures out the significance of her inheritance. This leads her on a worldwide trip exploring a map that at first glance makes no sense.

There's a lot of potential to these means of travel that could have been expanded beyond the two books in this series. There's a hint at a history similar to that of Warehouse 13 with a travel logic similar to that of the The Train to Impossible Places by P.G. Bell (2018).

For the puzzle loving reader, the book is also chock full of hidden messages. There's a solution key in the back of the book to check your answers or see where and how they were hidden.

Samantha's initial adventure can also be mapped on the road narrative spectrum. As she and her brother end up traveling together, they are collectively sibling travelers (CC). Their destinations are various cities (00). Their mode of transportation while unusual serves as a railroad (CC) in that there are fixed routes with predictable stations if one can read the map. Summarized then, Samantha Spinner and the Super Secret Plans is about siblings going to the city via the railroad (CC0000).

The sequel is Samantha Spinner and the Spectacular Specs (2019).

Four stars

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