by Victor Appleton (Author)
The Hardy Boys meets Alex Rider in this start to a brand-new series starring everyone's favorite inventor--Tom Swift!
When your dad funds the Swift Academy of Science and Technology, you're bound to have a bunch of tech at your disposal. So no one bats an eye when Tom and his best friend, Noah, test their new virtual reality drone before class. At the academy, once class starts and the drone is parked, their brainiac friends then launch into farfetched discussions about the curriculum. And when they watch a documentary about the FBI's most wanted hackers from the eighties, they quickly start speculating that the academy custodian is one of them.
At first, Tom dismisses the idea as another one of his friends' conspiracy theories. But using their new drone, he spies the custodian acting suspiciously around school. As Tom and his friends search for evidence that the custodian is the missing hacker, the signs become impossible to ignore when Tom gets threatening messages that warn him away from investigating. And when someone releases a virus in the school servers, all bets are off as the adjoining servers at tech giant Swift Enterprises come under fire. Can Tom and his friends uncover the true culprit before it's too late?
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Gr 4-7--This new series centers young Tom and fellow classmates at the Swift Academy of Science and Technology. When their teacher is absent and the substitute shows a documentary about the FBI's most wanted hackers from the 80s, Tom and his friends become convinced that the school's custodian is one of them. As they dive into the process of investigating him online, the school server shuts down all the computers. Then Tom gets an anonymous text message telling him to back off. Who is sabotaging the school computers, who is the school custodian really, and who is warning Tom and friends to stop trying to solve the mystery? Could the custodian and his accomplice be stealing Swift Enterprise secrets, including computer code? There are lots of red herrings here for readers to muddle through before the truth becomes clear. Drones, virtual reality headsets, genius students with photographic memories and perfect internal clocks, monthly invention conventions, technology and kids that know how to use it abound in this clever, fast-paced science fiction mystery. VERDICT An entertaining fantasy debut that will appeal to sci-fi fans and reluctant readers alike.--Deanna McDaniel, Genoa Middle School, OH
Copyright 2019 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.