Finding Lubchenko

By Michael Simmons

Teenage Evan is a rich man's son, but his dad thinks money will spoil his child and so Evan is perpetually short of cash. To make up for this lack, Evan liberates office equipment from his dad's company and sells it on E-Bay with the help of his best friend, Ruben.
Evan and his dad don't get along and not only because the dad doesn't give his son a generous allowance. Evan's mom died when he was young and the dad is raising Evan alone. Plus the dad is way older than most dads with kids Evan's age so there is a huge generation gap there. The dad also hails from conservative, old fashioned stock that Evan finds alien to his modern, California lifestyle.
Things come to a boil when Evan's dad is arrested for the murder of one of his employees. Not only is he accused of murder, but he is also accused of trafficking in deadly smallpox virus and of embezzling millions from the company. Evan may not like his dad much but he knows his dad is not a killer. Even a kid like Evan can see that his dad has been framed.
At first Evan finds it kind of fun to have his mean old dad locked up in jail. He even throws a party to celebrate. But things stop being fun when Evan faces the fact that he has the murdered man's computer in his possession, having stolen it the very day that the man was killed. Currently stored at Ruben's house, Evan wonders if anything on that computer could help prove his dad's innocence. Luckily Ruben is a computer whiz and manages to break into the computer files, which reveal that the dead man had been in touch with a person calling himself Lubchenko and that he suspected someone at the company was selling smallpox virus to terrorists. The emails to Luchenko are not full of a lot of detail, but they reveal that a meeting has been arranged in Paris at a cafe.
Ruben wants to turn the computer over to the police but Evan is against it because he knows his larceny will be revealed if they do and he doesn't want to go to jail. Somehow he talks Ruben and another friend, Erika, into going to Paris and showing up at the cafe at the time and date indicated. Evan books rooms at a first class hotel and the three friends set off for Paris to do their own investigation. While they are in Paris, they don't forget to enjoy the lively nightlife and visit lots of clubs, often not getting back to the hotel until nearly morning. Following up clues, it eventually dawns upon them that they are making targets of themselves and they switch hotels and lay low. It's a race between them and the killer as they struggle to get to Lubchenko and get back home before the killer finds them.

As I have said before, it is hard to like a story when you don't like the main character, which in this case is Evan. Evan is not a nice boy. He steals, he lies, he's a slacker and he justifies his actions by whining about what a hard ass his dad is. Yes, maybe his dad is cold and harsh, but it seems Evan does everything he can to get under his dad's skin. Evan is even willing to let his dad stay in jail while Evan sits on evidence that could help the police track down the real killer. Instead of doing the right thing, Evan does the easy thing.
Not only did I dislike Evan, I was disappointed that Evan didn't come to a better understanding of his father as the story progresses. They start out estranged and they end up estranged with Evan's dad enraged at all the money Evan spent while the dad was in prison: plane tickets to Paris, expensive new luggage, the best suites at the hotel. So even though the dad is exonerated, the book doesn't really have a happy ending as Evan is unrepentant and their relationship is even more strained than at the start of the book. Though I understand the story is continued in another book. Maybe in that book Evan manages to grow up a little and stop being such a selfish child.
Also, despite the trip to Paris, not much happens in the story. The kids party in Paris, meet with Lubchenko and go home. It's pretty slow. I never really got into the story. It just didn't capture my attention and I thought Evan was a brat.

For another review see Book Shelves of Doom.

New Word

Arrondissement: an administrative division; Paris is divided up into twenty arrondissements or districts. 'So, Café Saint-Beauvais was in a pretty nice neighborhood (the so-called Seventh Arrondissement) on the other side of the river from the Ritz.'