The+Mysterious+Benedict+Society+and+the+Prisoner's+Dilema(AD)

review by Allison D.
 * //The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner's Dilemma//**, Trenton Lee Stewart

This is the third and final installment of a trilogy documenting the adventures of the Mysterious Benedict Society. Gifted friends Kate Wetherall (an athletic optimist), Sticky Washington (who could easily recite a dictionary after reading it just once), Reynie Muldoon (who is very good at riddles and is very observant), and Constance Contraire (a stubborn four-year-old poet with seemingly psychic abilities) find themselves forced to remain within the heavily guarded gates of their friend and mentor, Mr. Nicholas Benedict (a genius with narcolepsy), with their family and their friends Rhonda Kazembee, Moocho Brazos (an ex-circus strongman), and Number Two (who hardly sleeps and consequentially is obliged to eat almost constantly) -and of course Mr. Benedict himself. The explanation for their predicament is an evil man named Ledroptha Curtain, who just-so-happens to be Mr. Benedict's long lost twin brother. Mr. Curtain is the power-hungry inventor of a machine that he calls the Whisperer, which has many capabilities including erasing people's memories, returning people's memories, and broadcasting hidden messages. The Whisperer is currently being put to good use at the hands of his twin, but its ruthless inventor is prepared to do anything to get his hands on it. Inside the house, Mr. Benedict has explained to the children how in the end, everything would inevitably come down to a man in Mr. Curtain's employment with a good heart but an undying loyalty to Mr. Curtain, a man named S.Q. Pedallion. Constance is finding her strange abilities expanding from the unerringly accurate predictions that she used to preform- she can now read people's mind and, if she concentrates very hard, achieve feats of telepathy; at one point she controls Sticky for a short period of time, which disturbs her greatly. She insists that Mr. Benedict use the Whisperer to help her remember what happened to her before she came to him. She discovers that some of Mr. Curtain's men, the 'Ten Men', had attempted to kidnap her from an orphanage at the age of two, but she had escaped to a library where she hid her birth certificate in a book. She is very excited to go get it- until Sticky informs her that the library had burned down years ago. She gets so upset that she runs away. That night, an unexplained blackout sweeps across the city of Stonetown where they live. A truck full of Ten Men steel the Whisperer from Mr. Benedict's basement. A secret agent named Milligan begins to rush the remaining children off to safety- until Reynie receives a telepathic message from Constance hinting as to where she is. Will Kate, Reynie, and Sticky get to Constance- or will the Ten Men find her first? What will happen when Mr. Curtain is reunited with his Whisperer? Who can the children trust? Can they finish this business with the Whisperer once and for all? Is this the end of the Mysterious Benedict Society?

I definitely recommend this book, but anyone seeking to read it should first read the rest of the series first. This book has a very complex plot and is very suspenseful. Yet it has just the right amount of humor. It represents people of all kinds, and is written in a way that makes you unwilling to put it down. I particularly enjoy the creative chapter titles employed by the author, such as "The Little Girl in the Big Chair" and "Bucket vs. Briefcase". It is a very good book for anyone that enjoys thrill and nonviolent conflict.