Gordon Korman. Unleashed. New York: Scholastic, 2015. Print.

Hey! It just turned 2015! This must be the absolute latest book by Gordon Korman. This is another in his Swindle series.

By now it is clear that Korman is recycling his basic plot. At least one of the six friends led by Griffin “The Man with a Plan” Bing gets into a jam. Getting out of the jam involves all of them using their skills or gifts including Ben’s smallness, Melissa’s technical know-how, Logan’s acting, Savannah’s animal handling, and Pitch’s acrobatic skills.

Unleashed gets its title from Melissa’s “Sweetie” Luthor, the attack Doberman. The dog goes nuts every tie a certain truck drives by. To make Luthor stop chasing this truck, Melissa invents a GPS-aided drone that follows Luthor and plays a distracting ultra-high pitch sound that distracts the dog long enough to get off the road and go home.

Around this same time, a misunderstanding breaks up the band of eighth grade friends into male and female factions, the school announces a Long Island-wide middle school invention fair, and a reclusive and crabby new neighbor blocks the kids’ shortcut to school.

Shortly after the girls decide to enter Melissa’s invention into the invention fair, it gets stolen. Once the girls figure that none of the three boys has it, the two main suspects are class bully Darren Vader and the unfriendly new neighbor.

They do not exactly break into the neighbor’s house, but they let Ben’s ferret (“he’s a service animal, not a pet”) into the house and discover an amazing fact about their new neighbor.

Meanwhile, Griffin’s vacuum cleaner silencer invention is a bust. It causes neighboring houses to have electrical blackouts.

Yes, it is wild and a bit silly, but that is what makes Korman’s books fun to read. The sextet do reunite and do break into a building with the help of a surprising ally, but I do not want to give away too much of the plot.

The climactic moment, though, is quite funny and most young adult readers should get a kick out of what happens. Unleashed is quick, light reading that should put a smile on most faces. This would be a good after-school special if not a straight commercial movie. Gordon Korman has a franchise now.