![Undercover (Kensy and Max, #3)](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1547415185l/43556919._SX98_.jpg)
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is the third Kensy and Max adventure, and it’s an enjoyable read.
Eleven-year-old Kensy and Max are twins, and also agents-in-training for the spy organisation, Pharos. Their grandmother, Dame Cordelia Spencer, is the Head of Pharos and their parents are on a mission, searching for their maternal grandparents. Their “manny”, Fitz, has the day-to-day care of the twins while their parents are absent.
The story begins in London. After a science experiment at school goes wrong, Kensy is convinced someone is trying to kill them. And when Dame Spencer’s home is partially destroyed by a mysterious explosion, their grandmother sends the twins and Fitz on a mission — all the way to Sydney, Australia.
The twins’ mission is to befriend Van and Ellery Chalmers, the grandchildren of Dame Spencer’s oldest friend. Dame Spencer has information that their mother, Tinsley, plans to take the Chalmers children away from their father, Dash, but nobody knows why.
Accordingly, Kensy and Max are enrolled at the very posh Wentworth Grammar, and Fitz, heavily disguised and posing as their father, begins his role as PE teacher at the school. Between being roped into the school choir (the Headmaster, Thaddeus Thacker, is obsessed with winning the Sydney Choral Festival for a record sixth time), cricket practice (Max discovers he has a talent for the game), and trying to fulfil their mission, the twins are very busy!
They also befriend a boy called Curtis Pepper, who is a bit of an amateur spy himself. Curtis plays a crucial role towards the end of the book when things really heat up!
Meanwhile, we find out that the twins’ maternal grandparents are, indeed, still alive, and have been held captive by a person or persons unknown for around 12 years. Both scientists, they had been working on a vaccine when they were kidnapped, but now their work involved creating “the vilest diseases known to man”, together with their cures, and “someone completely unknown to them was likely becoming the richest human on Earth”.
It all comes together nicely at the end, and the children discover that Thaddeus Thacker has a little secret of his own!
Coded messages, dastardly villains, lots of humour and action — what more could you want? As an additional bit of fun, each chapter title is coded using the Atbash cipher (where each letter of the alphabet is reversed (i.e., A = Z , etc.), explained by the author at the end of the book). So once you’ve finished the book, you can go back and decipher all the chapter headings. And yes, I did!
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