If there ever was a bad seed, it's Cadel Piggott. At the tender age of seven, he's been put into counseling for hacking into computers illegally, but the counseling he gets isn't quite what his foster parents think it is. Thaddeus Roth isn't your typical psychologist; he encourages Cadel's forays into the dark side of the online world and applauds and critiques his young charge as the boy manipulates the system to cause massive traffic jams and wide-scale power outages. In order to "earn" himself a new computer, he comes up with an electronic pen-pal scheme (think Face Book), which will have a bigger impact on his life than he could dream. Finally, as a graduation present to a high-school class with whom he neither identifies nor feels comfortable (being considerably younger than the rest), Cadel surreptitiously arranges for many of them to flunk out. A 14-year-old high school graduate with such an unusual skill set doesn't belong in a normal university, but Thaddeus Roth has a solution—along with some other surprises.

As we soon learn, Cadel is the son of Thaddeus Roth's employer—Dr. Phineas Darkkon, a criminal overlord of astonishing ability, currently serving a life term at one of Australia's most impregnable maximum security prisons, not that this keeps him from communicating with his son. He establishes a school just for Cadel—the Axis Institute for World Domination—and Cadel will soon be joining the incoming freshman class, where he'll learn such useful skills as Advanced Lying, Disguises, Embezzlement and of course, Computer Infiltration. The class is a mixed lot, including twin blonde girls who might be telepathic, a boy who wants to become a vampire, and a boy named Gazo whose body odor is so lethal that he has to wear a protective suit—and who wants to be Cadel's best friend!

Friendship is the one thing lacking in Cadel's life, that is, until he begins corresponding anonymously with a nurse named Kay-Lee, 10 years his senior, on his electronic pen-pal site. She's funny and interesting, and has an amazing grasp of mathematics, and while he knows it's wrong to lead her on, he enjoys his Internet chats with her. Then, when things take a darker, troubling turn at the Axis Institute, he finds he needs Kay-Lee's support just to keep going. Could he actually be developing a conscience?

Evil Genius is a kid-sized thriller, a fast-paced, intriguing novel for teens about the nature of good and evil. With surprising plot twists and steady doses of humor, Australian writer Catherine Jinks offers some much-needed escapism just in time for summer. Copyright 2007 BookPage Reviews.

With a series of breakneck twists and turns, Jinks's (the Pagan Chronicles) latest novel follows Cadel Piggott, a seven-year-old Australian boy with an incredible mind and a proclivity toward mischief: "He loved systems: phone systems, electrical systems, car engines, complicated traffic intersections." Following a string of disasters, which Cadel engineers (e.g., hacking into the city's power grid), his desperate adoptive parents take him to a psychologist, Dr. Thaddeus Roth. But instead of refocusing Cadel on more positive activities, Dr. Roth encourages the boy to develop increasingly destructive plans, such as orchestrating massive traffic jams and manipulating his classmates' emotions so that they turn on one another. Dr. Roth also stuns Cadel by revealing that he is employed by Cadel's birth father, Dr. Phineas Darkkon, a criminal mastermind serving a life sentence. From prison, Dr. Darkkon established the Axis Institute for the world's genetically talented and criminally inclined. Drs. Roth and Darkkon convince Cadel to join its small freshman class, and Cadel slowly uncovers a conspiracy of lies and betrayals that leave no aspect of his life untouched. Jinks has created an intricate, well-constructed and layered reality in this hefty novel, and as the complex deceptions that have shaped Cadel's life come to light, his emotional unraveling and awakening will likely engross readers. Ages 12-up. (May)

Gr 7 Up— Cadel Piggott was hacking into computer systems by the time he was seven and causing all sorts of trouble by the time he fast-tracked through high school. At age 14, he is encouraged by his longtime "psychiatrist" to enroll in the Axis Institute. There, the classes include Misinformation, Disguise, Basic Lying, Embezzlement, and Explosives. Cadel settles into his first semester of studies, but soon begins to suspect that something is very wrong here. Through Partner Post, his online matching service experiment, he receives a cryptic warning from one of his subscribers, and he begins to make plans to investigate his teachers. A trail of hacked information takes him to places he doesn't want to go. A flowing and coherent style leads readers into the thriller that Evil Genius becomes. Although background information dominates the beginning of the book, the plot quickly picks up its dark and dangerous pace as Cadel moves through his fear and realization of what is happening around him. As an alternative thriller that shows the good side of evil, Jinks sets up a compelling world of lies, deceit, and betrayal that will have lovers of mystery or computer-based investigation on the edge as they devour this page-turner. A sequel is planned.—Dylan Thomarie, Johnstown High School, NY