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Accidental Detectives #13
The Volcano of Doom
Postcard-perfect Hawaii proves to be anything but paradise when Ricky and the other Accidental Detectives stumble on an active volcano. This one threatens to destroy the hiding places of immigrants. What can the Accidental Detectives do to help—without being reduced to ash?
144 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2002
3 people are currently reading
72 people want to read
About the author
Sigmund Brouwer
260 books407 followersSigmund loves going to schools to get kids excited about reading, reaching roughly 80,000 students a year through his Rock&Roll Literacy Show.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
June 25, 2024
The Volcano of Doom is the first of the re-released and rewritten The Accidental Detectives series, telling an original plot with familiar characters and introducing some new elements that distinctly separate this new series from the original. I always loved The Volcano of Doom as a kid, and though it doesn’t hold up quite as well as it did then, it’s still very worthy of its place in The Accidental Detectives canon.
During Easter break from school, Ricky Kidd and his family and friends travel to Hawaii for the wedding of Ricky’s dad’s college best friend, Joseph Norbert, an Internet stock trader. After a few odd occurrences, Ricky, Mike, and Lisa become suspicious, but their speculations are confirmed when Mike finds a jeweled statue of a Japanese warrior in Norbert’s fishing buoys, being dropped off in a dumpster for an obvious pickup. Norbert mysteriously disappears the next day, and Ricky and his friends begin researching the statue for clues, though they are constantly forced to dodge the pursuit of a stranger who wants to steal back the statue. Their investigation leads them to a dangerous encounter in the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and a shocking discovery about the underworld of art smuggling.
The Volcano of Doom was released in 2002, six years after the conclusion of the original The Accidental Detectives series, which ended with Tyrant of the Badlands and established the gang as being nearly fourteen years old and showing some signs of growing up. When Sigmund Brouwer released The Volcano of Doom and the last two books of the series, he also revised the rest of the original series to reflect the “retroactive continuity” of the add-ons, which is why the books are completely reordered in the new series and why you’ll see a lot of discrepancies with the original series if you’re a die-hard fan like me. If you pay careful attention to the timeline of the original series, you’ll know that Madness at Moonshiner’s Bay takes place during Ricky’s Easter vacation at twelve years old, and that in the new series Brouwer revises that book to directly follow Shroud of the Lion instead of The Downtown Desperadoes so his new timeline can work. It’s the little things.
The Volcano of Doom introduces some new concepts to the series — Ricky now has a baby sister named Rachel, who is also retconned into the earlier books by Brouwer, and we learn that Lisa has been running a professional babysitting service. We also see a significantly higher use of modern technology by the gang to solve their mystery. Remember back in the original series, when things like camcorders and Walkmans and video players ruled the world? In The Volcano of Doom, we see the gang utilizing long-range walkie-talkies, clunky cell phones, and *gasp* the Internet! I think my favorite line in the book is Ralphy’s impassioned, ingenuous exclamation of “The Internet is great!” when he is able to find basic information online. Ah, the innocence of the early 2000s.
The plot can be a bit erratic at times, including the offbeat moments when Joel catches an eel and when Lisa tricks Ricky and Mike with the newspaper prank. These are great vignettes, but Brouwer curiously includes them without using them to any further significance in the story; in the original series, every moment in the book would be paramount to understanding the plot, which is something I think Brouwer struggles with here. However, the art smuggling plot is pretty interesting, despite the fact that Ricky does very little actual sleuthing and a lot more casual observing until he gets to save the day at the end.
What redeems The Volcano of Doom is the interactions between Ricky, Mike, and Lisa. For the last several books in the original series, Lisa Higgins was very much pushed to the side, and Mike got a few moments here and there. With Ralphy and Joel very much sidelined (unfortunately), our current trio bears the vast majority of the story with their sarcastic dialogue, clever April Fools Day pranks, and logical deductions. Some of the funniest moments in the book are simply derived from the gang’s downtime interactions, such as when Lisa discovers Ricky and Mike’s additions to Joel’s homework. Ricky and Mike also end up having their friendship put to the test early on in The Volcano of Doom, with Ricky learning how difficult it can be to forgive a best friend for something very insignificant. A few other Christian messages — such as Ricky’s speech about the splendor of God’s universe and Norbert’s regrets about letting his greed get the best of him — get worked into the novel as well, which is a nice complement to the story. As always, Ricky and his friends’ dynamics are the very heart of The Accidental Detectives, and Brouwer really pulls through on that front.
The Volcano of Doom is far from perfect and generally inferior composition-wise to the original series, but Brouwer does a good job of making it feel like The Accidental Detectives by focusing on the gang’s dynamics and their determination to solve the mystery (though why they want to get involved in solving Norbert’s criminal underworld connections is beyond me). The absence of Joel and Ralphy is disappointing, as is the lack of the usual airtight plot, but Brouwer does include plenty of hilarious moments and Christian ponderings to keep it afloat.
During Easter break from school, Ricky Kidd and his family and friends travel to Hawaii for the wedding of Ricky’s dad’s college best friend, Joseph Norbert, an Internet stock trader. After a few odd occurrences, Ricky, Mike, and Lisa become suspicious, but their speculations are confirmed when Mike finds a jeweled statue of a Japanese warrior in Norbert’s fishing buoys, being dropped off in a dumpster for an obvious pickup. Norbert mysteriously disappears the next day, and Ricky and his friends begin researching the statue for clues, though they are constantly forced to dodge the pursuit of a stranger who wants to steal back the statue. Their investigation leads them to a dangerous encounter in the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and a shocking discovery about the underworld of art smuggling.
The Volcano of Doom was released in 2002, six years after the conclusion of the original The Accidental Detectives series, which ended with Tyrant of the Badlands and established the gang as being nearly fourteen years old and showing some signs of growing up. When Sigmund Brouwer released The Volcano of Doom and the last two books of the series, he also revised the rest of the original series to reflect the “retroactive continuity” of the add-ons, which is why the books are completely reordered in the new series and why you’ll see a lot of discrepancies with the original series if you’re a die-hard fan like me. If you pay careful attention to the timeline of the original series, you’ll know that Madness at Moonshiner’s Bay takes place during Ricky’s Easter vacation at twelve years old, and that in the new series Brouwer revises that book to directly follow Shroud of the Lion instead of The Downtown Desperadoes so his new timeline can work. It’s the little things.
The Volcano of Doom introduces some new concepts to the series — Ricky now has a baby sister named Rachel, who is also retconned into the earlier books by Brouwer, and we learn that Lisa has been running a professional babysitting service. We also see a significantly higher use of modern technology by the gang to solve their mystery. Remember back in the original series, when things like camcorders and Walkmans and video players ruled the world? In The Volcano of Doom, we see the gang utilizing long-range walkie-talkies, clunky cell phones, and *gasp* the Internet! I think my favorite line in the book is Ralphy’s impassioned, ingenuous exclamation of “The Internet is great!” when he is able to find basic information online. Ah, the innocence of the early 2000s.
The plot can be a bit erratic at times, including the offbeat moments when Joel catches an eel and when Lisa tricks Ricky and Mike with the newspaper prank. These are great vignettes, but Brouwer curiously includes them without using them to any further significance in the story; in the original series, every moment in the book would be paramount to understanding the plot, which is something I think Brouwer struggles with here. However, the art smuggling plot is pretty interesting, despite the fact that Ricky does very little actual sleuthing and a lot more casual observing until he gets to save the day at the end.
What redeems The Volcano of Doom is the interactions between Ricky, Mike, and Lisa. For the last several books in the original series, Lisa Higgins was very much pushed to the side, and Mike got a few moments here and there. With Ralphy and Joel very much sidelined (unfortunately), our current trio bears the vast majority of the story with their sarcastic dialogue, clever April Fools Day pranks, and logical deductions. Some of the funniest moments in the book are simply derived from the gang’s downtime interactions, such as when Lisa discovers Ricky and Mike’s additions to Joel’s homework. Ricky and Mike also end up having their friendship put to the test early on in The Volcano of Doom, with Ricky learning how difficult it can be to forgive a best friend for something very insignificant. A few other Christian messages — such as Ricky’s speech about the splendor of God’s universe and Norbert’s regrets about letting his greed get the best of him — get worked into the novel as well, which is a nice complement to the story. As always, Ricky and his friends’ dynamics are the very heart of The Accidental Detectives, and Brouwer really pulls through on that front.
The Volcano of Doom is far from perfect and generally inferior composition-wise to the original series, but Brouwer does a good job of making it feel like The Accidental Detectives by focusing on the gang’s dynamics and their determination to solve the mystery (though why they want to get involved in solving Norbert’s criminal underworld connections is beyond me). The absence of Joel and Ralphy is disappointing, as is the lack of the usual airtight plot, but Brouwer does include plenty of hilarious moments and Christian ponderings to keep it afloat.
January 26, 2020
This is a fun series I enjoyed a lot as a kid. They went out of print years ago. Decades later, I discovered that they are available again on kindle, and the original twelve books have been increased to sixteen. This is one of the new additions, but I got the feeling this is a sort of “garage mix”: an early story that was not good enough to print, and was updated and released much later to lengthen the series. A lot didn’t make sense. The official description doesn’t match the book. The kids don’t act like themselves, the story is less creative than the original series, and Joel is barely in it! Skip this one and start with Lost Beneath Manhattan, Missing Map of the Pirate’s Haven, or Race for the Park Street Treasure.
March 31, 2023
Reviewed for local school library. Another fun adventure and mystery for young boys in particular. Two mentions of divorce early in the book (pg 16, 25). Language is squeaky clean once again. Beautiful section about God and the universe (pg 88-91).
September 14, 2019
What happens after friends have an argument? In the case of the Accidental Detectives, they find themselves in a sticky web of mystery when Mike wanders off after fighting with Ricky. In a business’s dumpster on the island of Hawaii, he discovers an old Asian looking doll that someone wants. And they won’t leave the kids alone until they get it.
“The Volcano of Doom” is the first book in the Accidental Detectives Series, a series geared for kids ages 10 - 12 years old. This story is set in Hawaii, when Ricky’s family is on vacation to attend a wedding of his Dad’s old friend, Joseph. Tagging along is Mike and Lisa; Lisa came to be a babysitter for Ricky’s baby sister. I’ve come to really enjoy this chapter book series from Sigmund Brouwer. Though his characters are young, they act and say things just the way you would expect kids to, and I think that makes the books attractive for the age group they’re written for.
The story line is full of suspense as the kids dodge the mysterious men who keep trying to steal the Asian doll back. At one point, one guy even breaks into the house they’re staying at and threatens Ricky, who wakes from sleep to discover the intruder in his room. The kids are thrust into a dangerous adventure that keeps you on the edge of your seat. I enjoyed how much fun this short story was and think kids would enjoy it too. Highly recommended! Especially for boys.
“The Volcano of Doom” is the first book in the Accidental Detectives Series, a series geared for kids ages 10 - 12 years old. This story is set in Hawaii, when Ricky’s family is on vacation to attend a wedding of his Dad’s old friend, Joseph. Tagging along is Mike and Lisa; Lisa came to be a babysitter for Ricky’s baby sister. I’ve come to really enjoy this chapter book series from Sigmund Brouwer. Though his characters are young, they act and say things just the way you would expect kids to, and I think that makes the books attractive for the age group they’re written for.
The story line is full of suspense as the kids dodge the mysterious men who keep trying to steal the Asian doll back. At one point, one guy even breaks into the house they’re staying at and threatens Ricky, who wakes from sleep to discover the intruder in his room. The kids are thrust into a dangerous adventure that keeps you on the edge of your seat. I enjoyed how much fun this short story was and think kids would enjoy it too. Highly recommended! Especially for boys.
March 10, 2014
The start of the revised Accidental Detective series and a brand new book. A trip to Hawaii for a wedding turns dangerous when an ancient Japanese statue is found in the possession of the groom, who promptly disappears. This may be a middle grade book, but it is filled with twists and a puzzling mystery you won't want to put down.
Read my full review at Carstairs Considers.
Read my full review at Carstairs Considers.
March 27, 2010
Greed is not good. Here is a Christian kids mystery / fiction book that shows what happens when you get just a little greedy and how it can snowball. Good mystery.
March 28, 2011
I totally remember reading this book and others in the series a while back. Super funny, I loved Sigmund Brouwer.
March 2, 2017
I didn't even finish this book, it wasn't that was anything horrible in it but the kids are really mean to eachother and I couldn't stand it.
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November 26, 2012I really enjoyed this book! Not only was the mystery good, the main characters had morals, so I didn't have to worry at all. Very good.
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January 14, 2019If a story takes place on April Fool's Day, it's bound to be funny. This book is no exception. I invite you to join a group of kids on a funny mystery!
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews