Gordon Korman. Masterminds. New York: Harper, 2015. Print.

This is the absolute latest from our current favorite Young Adult (YA) writer. Gordon Korman did not come out with another Swindle book. There are no Great Danes, but there are some things that do remind us of Korman’s other works.

First, we do have a group of talented kids. In this case, though, none have special talents, merely some hobbies. There are no super hackers or rock climbers, although the kids in Masterminds do have to slightly different things with the Internet, and there is a break-in. It is not exactly a fish out of water story like Ungifted. It is more of a fish in weird water story, like the old joke about one fish asking another one, “What is water?”

Korman tells the story very well. Each chapter is narrated by one of five twelve and thirteen year olds who live in Serenity, New Mexico. It does not take too long to realize that this is some kind of Utopian experiment. There is no evil overlord, but the reader understands that there is a sense of unreality. The nearest town, Taos, is eighty miles away, and when the kids ride their bikes near the town line, they get mysteriously sick.

The population of Serenity is only 185, so everyone knows everyone else. The only employer is a plastics factory that makes orange traffic cones. But one of the kids observes that the trucks that are supposedly shipping the cones to customers around the country, really do not go anywhere. When they see the cones close up, they are covered with dust, and some have stains on them that make them individually recognizable, and those cones stay on the trucks for weeks though they are carried around on the trucks.

This Utopia apparently tries to make people nice. There are no contact sports. The wildest sport they play is water polo. The others are badminton and croquet. Their online history book tells them that the Boston Tea Party happened in 1773 when the British governors met with colonial leaders to discuss independence over tea. One of the kids discovers a different version of the story one evening when a thunderstorm knocks out the local network, and he picks up a wi-fi signal from somewhere else that connects him to the real Internet.

It is hard to call the story dystopian because Serenity is so pleasant. Still, the group of kids realize that something is amiss because one of their friends has to leave, ostensibly to care for his aging grandparents, but his parents stay in town. He leaves a note telling the others that he has leave Serenity because he is turning fourteen and that he is actually going to be attending a boarding school near Pueblo, Colorado.

And then there are the Purple People Eaters. That is what the school kids call the security people at the plastics factory. They wear purple uniforms, hence their nickname. There is no police force in town. Everyone knows everyone else and knows pretty much what everyone else is up to. The plastics factory security detail double as police, not that there is ever much need for them other than occasional responses to injuries or illness.

But the Purple People Eaters keep to themselves. They do not live in town. Indeed, no one in school knows their names—except that one is Mr. Delaney. The only reason they know his last name is that he recently married Mrs. Delaney, the water polo coach who just arrived in town newly wed.

Randy, the one who had to relocate to Colorado, secretly took pictures of all the known security people, gave them storybook names, and put their pictures on trading card parodies. He called them names like Rump L. Stiltskin, Alexander the Grape, and General Confusion.

Here is the card for Baron Vladimir von Horseteeth:

Born: 0.003 seconds after the Big Bang
Hobbies: Tearing heads off live chickens, flatulence, knitting
Goal: To win the Kentucky Derby
Major Accomplishment: Flossing
Favorite Foods: Hay, carrots, sugar cubes
Favorite Color: Thursday

In spite of its perhaps more serious plot, Korman still shows his sense of humor. The humor makes us like the kids, even when they get in trouble.

They are about to get in bigger trouble, though. What really does go on in the cone factory? Why are they literally out in the middle of nowhere? Why do the kids get sick when they even innocently try to go beyond the town line?

Korman still tells a good story. One warning: Masterminds is not the first book in a series like the Swindle series. This the first book in what may be a trilogy. In other words, the story is to be continued. And this review has hardly given away any of the plot—it really is complicated. Could it happen here?