Gordon Korman.  Zoobreak. New York: Scholastic, 2009. Print.

———. Hideout. New York: Scholastic, 2013. Print.

Two weeks ago we got a kick out of listening to Swindle by Gordon Korman. Zoobreak is its first sequel. It has the same kind of humor, the same characters, and to some degree the same plot. Indeed, one of the local policemen notes the similarity of this caper to the one in Swindle.

Still, Zoobreak is another Korman YA page-turner. The six caper artists are at it again. This time, the story focuses more on Savannah, the dog whisperer. Her family monkey (she avoids the word pet) has been stolen and picked up by a shady Mr. Nastase. S. Wendell was “Swindle”; now Nastase is “Nasty.” He runs a lame zoo on an old paddle wheel boat that sails from port to port. The animals are kept poorly, so when the kids break into the zoo boat to rescue the monkey, they decide to rescue all the animals.

After breaking out of the zoo boat and finding temporary homes for about 40 different animal, they have to break into a real zoo to leave the animals there—except, of course, for Savannah’s monkey. As you can imagine, this does lead to a number of wild events and another entertaining story even if the plot thread is a retread.

If I have counted correctly, Hideout is the fifth book in the series. This time S. Wendell Palomino, the baseball card thief from Swindle,  has returned to Long Island and has regained custody of Luthor, the 150-pound Doberman that used to guard his collectibles store.

The problem is that Palomino left town two years before in disgrace, and Savannah’s family has had the dog ever since. Not only is Savannah extremely attached to the pooch, but she fears that Palomino will abuse the dog as he did before. Apparently in the fourth book of the series, Showoff, Luthor did quite well at a dog show, and Swindle sees a chance to make some money.

Not only that, but it is now summer, and each of the six kids is off to a month of camp at three different camps in the Catskills. Griffin Bing is the man with plan once again.

Though the same characters and even the same villain appear here, Hideout is much less of a plot retread than Zoobreak. The plans “gang agley” about fifty different ways, but the kids are once again able to foil their nemesis Mr. S. Wendell Palomino.

The mystery adventure series I grew up with was the Hardy Boys. These stories about Griffin and his gang remind me of those stories a little bit. They make me wonder what the Hardy Boys (and their father Fenton Hardy) would have done with smart phones, personal computers, and the Internet.