The sto­ry trav­els from Cana­da to Uruguay to Detroit. Each one of sev­er­al cousins are engaged in fol­low­ing one part of the trail left by their mys­te­ri­ous recent­ly deceased grand­father, who the nar­ra­tor had only met once, with the goal of com­bin­ing each part of the trail so as to find out who their grand­fa­ther real­ly was. I need­ed to make a schemat­ic of all the char­ac­ters and all the adven­tures of this Holo­caust ​“detec­tive-type” sto­ry with its twists and turns. It is an enig­ma wrapped around a mys­tery with dozens of char­ac­ters. Writ­ten in a tough teen ver­nac­u­lar, the nar­ra­tor is like a teenage Humphrey Bog­a­rt who pre­tends to be an inno­cent teen when the police ques­tion him on a mur­der charge to which he is either an inno­cent wit­ness or the mur­der­er and his grand­ma has to come and bail him out. You might want to keep a pad and pen­cil next to the book to keep track of each adven­ture and its char­ac­ters, espe­cial­ly the old man with a bed­room full of Hitler mem­o­ra­bil­ia, and the Jew­ish boyfriend — oops, I had bet­ter not give it away — because no one is as he and she presents them­selves. I guar­an­tee, you will not put down this book until the end, but keep that scorecard. 

Rec­om­mend­ed for ages 11 and up.