Vanishing Act

Vanishing Act by John Feinstein

Category: Young Adult Fiction Grade: B

As those of you who've followed this blog for a while know, I think John Feinstein is the best book-length sports writer working today. He's just released a new book about the pro-golf tour so you'll probably hear from me later this summer about his "mainstream" writing. When I saw that he had written a young adult sports-oriented mystery, I couldn't resist picking it up. It actually turns out to be the second book in a series and I didn't read the first one, but I don't think it matters much.

As with virtually all young-adult fiction these days, the stars of the book are kids - in this case, two 13 year old aspiring sports reporters, Stevie Thomas and Susan Carol Anderson. In the first book, that I didn't read, they apparently each won an essay contest and won press credentials to the college basketball Final Four. At that event, they stumbled on a point shaving scandal and saved the life of one of the final four players. That sets up this book which has the two of them, now with reputations, meeting in New York to cover the U.S. Open tennis tournament. As expected, they get involved in a crime, help to solve it and continue on their path to becoming the next star in sports journalism.

The bad news here is that Feinstein has, to some degree, fallen in to the trap that a lot of YA writers fall in to - he's written down to his audience. Because of that, the book, while it reads really fast, doesn't feel terribly well written. Rowlings, Pullman and others have proven that kids like to read well written books and that you don't need to dumb down the writing to capture their attention. The other problem the book has (and I know this sounds contradictory) is Feinstein has put dialog in the mouths of 13 year old kids that just don't seem to fit. Weird but what we get is author's words that sound too juvenile and hero's words that sound too adult.

The good news here is that Feinstein had actually written a pretty entertaining story. If you follow tennis at all, you'll find real people that you know -- Bud Collins has a major role in the story and Andy Roddick has a cameo. The characters are well developed and, other than talking like they were 30, they act like we'd expect them to act. While the story line is a little far fetched, it's realistic enough that in the crazy world of professional athletics, you wouldn't be completely stunned if it actually happened.

Fast read and not a bad book at all for anybody. Highly recommended for teenage sports fans.