Sammy Keyes and the Killer Cruise
Read Sammy Keyes and the Killer Cruise Online
Authors: Wendelin Van Draanen
Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief
Sammy Keyes and the Skeleton Man
Sammy Keyes and the Sisters of Mercy
Sammy Keyes and the Runaway Elf
Sammy Keyes and the Curse of Moustache Mary
Sammy Keyes and the Hollywood Mummy
Sammy Keyes and the Search for Snake Eyes
Sammy Keyes and the Art of Deception
Sammy Keyes and the Psycho Kitty Queen
Sammy Keyes and the Dead Giveaway
Sammy Keyes and the Wild Things
Sammy Keyes and the Cold Hard Cash
Sammy Keyes and the Wedding Crasher
Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls
Sammy Keyes and the Power of Justice Jack
Sammy Keyes and the Showdown in Sin City
Shredderman: Secret Identity
Shredderman: Attack of the Tagger
Shredderman: Meet the Gecko
Shredderman: Enemy Spy
The Gecko & Sticky: Villain’s Lair
The Gecko & Sticky: The Greatest Power
The Gecko & Sticky: Sinister Substitute
The Gecko & Sticky: The Power Potion
How I Survived Being a Girl
Flipped
Swear to Howdy
Runaway
Confessions of a Serial Kisser
The Running Dream
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2013 by Wendelin Van Draanen Parsons
Jacket art and interior illustrations copyright © 2013 by Dan Yaccarino
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Van Draanen, Wendelin.
Sammy Keyes and the killer cruise / Wendelin Van Draanen;
illustrations by Dan Yaccarino
p. cm.
Summary: Teen sleuth Sammy Keyes solves a classic locked-room mystery aboard a cruise ship.
eISBN: 978-0-307-97409-9
[1. Wealth—Fiction. 2. Family problems—Fiction. 3. Missing persons—Fiction. 4. Fathers and daughters—Fiction. 5. Cruise ships—Fiction. 6. Friendship—Fiction. 7. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Yaccarino, Dan, illustrator. II. Title.
PZ7.V2857Safm 2013
[Fic]—dc23
2012045296
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
This book is dedicated to Sue Grafton, Margaret Maron, and in memory of Joan Lowery Nixon.
Each provided encouragement to me in advance of the first Sammy Keyes book, and each has been inspirational since.
Special thanks go to
Dr. Nanine Van Draanen, chemistry professor
and sister extraordinaire,
and to
Mark Parsons and Nancy Siscoe, my partners in crime for every Sammy Keyes book, but especially this one!
I look back on things I’ve done and wonder … why didn’t I see that coming?
Why didn’t I know that was a bad idea?
Why didn’t someone
warn
me?
Grams would tell you she
does
warn me and that the question should really be, Why don’t I
listen
?
Which, yeah, I admit, is usually the case.
But not this time. This time,
I
thought it was a bad idea. This time, I warned Grams and my mother and Hudson and anyone else who told me it was a good idea that it was a bad idea.
This time,
they
didn’t listen.
Which is how I wound up on a cruise ship with a dad I barely knew, an endless buffet of party animals, and a family of creepy millionaires.
Happy birthday to me.
I was allowed to bring one friend. And since Marissa McKenze has been my best friend since third grade, and since it looks like she’ll be moving to Ohio in June because her mom’s lined up a job there, and who knows how long it’ll be before I’ll get to do anything with her again after that, and since I wasn’t allowed to bring Casey because he’s my boyfriend and it would have been “inappropriate,” and since my other good friend Holly thought cruising sounded like a nightmare, the choice was easy.
Marissa.
Even Mrs. McKenze was for it, and she’s never for anything that has to do with her daughter spending time with me. According to her, I’m “hazardous.”
And yet, there we were, at the Long Beach dock with our luggage and passports, about to cruise to Mexico.
Actually, I think Mrs. McKenze being okay with the trip had more to do with Darren Cole being my dad than her daughter having one last adventure with her best friend.
He seems to have that effect on middle-aged women.
Something about the shaggy hair and the guitar makes them lose their minds.