The Maze of Bones, by Rick Riordan

The Maze of Bones is the first book of The 39 Clues, a hybrid creation from Scholastic Books.  Conceived as a book series, card game, video game, and contest, it's a very slick production.  Scholastic has stated their intention to draw reluctant readers to the books through the games, and while I'm sure that happens once in a while, it just feels like a highly designed marketing scheme to me.

Scholastic recruited a number of children's authors to write these books, which has the side-effect in library-land that the books aren't filed together on the shelf.  The first book is written by children's lit superstar Rick Riordan, with further volumes by heavyweights Gordon Korman, Margaret Peterson Haddix and a handful of others.

The Maze of Bones is a mystery adventure series, part Da Vinci Code and part Harry Potter.  The protagonists are orphans seeking to live up to their birthright,  out-think their relatives and competitors, and crack a code to find a treasure that could change the world.  Plot-holes include: several minors jetting across continents with no recognizable adult supervision, and poorly explained animosity between members of the four family groups.  Most characters are quite superficial, and everyone seems to solve obscure clues far too easily and at exactly the same pace.   I'm glad that it's inspired kids to keep reading, but I think I'll be reading the Wikipedia entries to see what I'm missing in the rest of the series.