Synopsis: Amedeo Kaplan, a late-in-life child, has just moved to St. Malo, Florida from New York. New kids are the norm in this hot and humid Navy town so Amedeo is finding it hard to stand out in the crowd. But Amedeo is unique. He dreams of discovering some treasure that no one else has ever discovered. And if he could find a friend at the same time to share his discovery with, so much the better.
Review: I wanted to love this book. What children's lit bibliophile doesn't want to love a Konigsburg novel? She hasn't won two Newbery awards for nothing. I certainly love the title, and all the elements for a great novel are there: two smart, if slightly precocious, boys, an eccentric former opera singer, who can't leave her diva 
days behind, a mysterious piece of art, and a painful secret linked back to Nazi Germany. In addition, Konigsburg's prose is lovely. So why didn't I love this book?
In part, I didn't really like Amedeo and his new friend, William Wilcox. Both seem a bit too smart and worldly for their age. For instance, when Amedeo notices that William's mother "turns away anger" like his friend Mrs. Vanderwaal or when William is explaining why Mrs. Zender, the former mezzo-soprano, can't modernize her home. "It's a Catch-22. To have enough money to fix up her house proper she will have to sell her house to have the money to fix it up." I understand that William's mother is an estate liquidator, but isn't his involvement in the business just too extensive for a 12 year old?
Then you have the tenuous connection of Amedeo's godfather, Peter Vanderwaal, to the story. Peter is the curator of the Sheboygan Art Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, where he is preparing an exhibit on Degenerate art, or art that was stolen by Nazi government officials during WWII. Peter's father, who passes away at the beginning of novel, just happens to have worked trying to hide some of this same art from the Nazis as a boy in Holland. The reader finds this out by reading part of the father's life story written on a tablet of paper. When the writing ends mid-story, Peter never asks his mother if his father wrote more. Of course there is more, but if Peter isn't interested in his family's history, why should the reader be?
Thankfully, while Konigsburg's characterizations and plot devices have faltered in this novel, the prose is still wonderful. For instance, she has the most lovely description of friendship. "Friendship is a combination of art and craft. The craft part is in knowing how to give and how to take. The art part is in knowing when, and the whole process only works when no one is keeping track." Or when Mrs. Zender is explaining to Amedeo that one never truly sees all of a person. "Ninety percent of who you are is invisible. If you weigh two hundred and fifty pounds instead of a hundred and fifty pounds, people are seeing twenty-five pounds instead of fifteen. They may think they are seeing more, but it is still only ten percent."
So while I wasn't as attached to the characters or plot as I have been with past Konigsburg novels, I still found that reading this novel was like returning to an old friend. The turn of Konigsburg's phrasing was enough to keep me turning the pages.
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