Trenton Lee Stewart Introduces Another Great Series with The Mysterious Benedict Society

In 2006, I turned the last page in A Series of Unfortunate Events. In 2007, I bid a reluctant farewell to Harry Potter. This year, I opened the first volume of The Mysterious Benedict Society. Perhaps I have found a worthy successor to those most excellent series.

This hefty middle grade novel by Trenton Lee Stewart reminded me of both. Instead of three orphaned children with unusual talents, it features four Well, not all are strictly orphaned, but as Reynie, the leader of the little group, observes, each child is, in some sense, alone. They respond to a curious ad in the paper promising "special opportunities" to those who pass a series of unusual tests. After they meet each other, it becomes clear that each has passed the tests using very different methods. It's their complementary ways of looking at the world that make them such ideal teammates.

Reynie Muldoon is the first character we meet, and Stewart allows us into his head more than the others'. A good-natured lad who is very intelligent but despises school, Reynie's specialty is puzzling things out. If some sort of trickery is afoot, Reynie is likely to pick up on it. As a lifelong loner, he loves the fact that he now has friends but is mystified by the way they look to him for leadership in all of their decisions. George Washington, a nervous, bespectacled boy who prefers to be called Sticky, is incredibly well-read, and his memory is impeccable. While he is plagued with insecurities, Sticky's extensive knowledge, particularly of Morse Code, is invaluable to the group.

Cheerful Kate Wetherall is a bundle of energy. Undaunted by whatever challenges lie in her path, she goes tumbling headfirst into danger, always concocting a clever, physically taxing scheme to achieve her ends. Petite Constance Contraire is the last to join the group, and though the others find it difficult to bond with her, since she always seems to be cranky, and question what unique abilities qualify her for their impending mission, they trust Mr. Benedict's assurances that her value will soon become apparent.

Mr. Benedict is the eccentric old man who organized the tests, and he gives the foursome a sense of stability that the Baudelaire orphans lack. He might well be compared to Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter's sage headmaster. Like the famed wizard, he offers guidance but also leaves his young charges to figure out many things on their own. His special task involves sending them to a prestigious institute as uninviting as the one featured in The Austere Academy. There, they must try to excel and thereby learn as many of founder Ledroptha Curtain's secrets as they can without getting sucked into his web of illusions.

The Institute has an oppressive aura about it, like something out of 1984; most of the students seem to have been brainwashed, and it's doubtful whether any one of the children could resist the subtle seductions of Mr. Curtain and his machinery for long if they didn't have each other. Though they know Mr. Benedict and his friends are keeping an eye on them, they have no allies within the Institute itself, with the possible exception of S. Q. Pedalian, a bumbling Executive (a glorified hall monitor, among other things) who always treats them kindly but remains loyal to Mr. Curtain. This dim-witted young man who reminds me a bit of Stan Shunpike, conductor of the Knight Bus in the Harry Potter series, is my favorite of the minor characters, and I'm anxious to see in what direction the sequel will take him.

Part of the book's fun is trying to figure out the solutions to riddles and the meanings of clues before the main characters do. The most interesting revelations are character-related, and I confess that most of them took me by surprise, though a forehead-slapping "Of course!" soon followed. Stewart does an especially good job of resolving certain character traits and back stories as the novel draws to a close. The book is on the long side at nearly 500 pages, but there are almost 40 chapters, so the narrative is broken up into nice, manageable chunks.

It's too early for me to decide just where The Mysterious Benedict Society fits in with some of the intermediate series I've most enjoyed, but I certainly like it enough to pick up the second book and follow Reynie, Sticky, Kate and Constance through their next great adventure.