James Patterson is the most popular storyteller of our time and the creator of such unforgettable characters and series as Alex Cross, the Women’s Murder Club, Jane Smith, and Maximum Ride. He has coauthored #1 bestselling novels with Bill Clinton, Dolly Parton, and Michael Crichton, as well as collaborated on #1 bestselling nonfiction, including The Idaho Four, Walk in My Combat Boots, and Filthy Rich. Patterson has told the story of his own life in the #1 bestselling autobiography James Patterson by James Patterson. He is the recipient of an Edgar Award, ten Emmy Awards, the Literarian Award from the National Book Foundation, and the National Humanities Medal.
(This review regards the entirety of the series.) These books seemed to start okay, but they end up pretty muddled. The Kidds are treasure hunters who seek lost items around the globe. There's Bick, the stinky one who "writes" the stories, Beck, the twin of Bick who "does" the illustrations, Storm, a walking Wikipedia who is frustrated with her real name for unexplained reasons, and Tommy, a not-so-smart surfer guy who gets screwed over by every spy girl there is. The first books deal with the parents getting lost, and then they cut off to other odd adventures. Theme: Girls are untrustworthy, Collier or some other goon has to be mixed up in the mess, the CIA is very fishy, and the good guys succeed in finding the valuables. There are also consistency issues and the matter of degrading drawing. What seemed to appear as inked drawings in the beginning is now smudged and rushed. I think Juliana Neufeld was pouring lower effort into the later books. So overall, yeah, the Kidd family is quite annoying, with their antics and the parents always going missing. Read the first books up to the point where the parents are rescued. Then stop. Because there's not enough good material for this nonsense.
This series by James Patterson is amazing how they travel the world and find treasure. It was exciting to read how the Treasure Hunters beat the NCTE to each treasure. I liked how we found out what happened to the parents in the first 2 books, but I won't spoil anymore. You will need to read to find out!