Sophomore Undercover, by Ben Esch When I was headed for Casper over Thanksgiving break, I hurriedly grabbed a couple of unread galleys from the pile, and this was one of them. The story follows Dixie Nguyen, a Vietnamese orphan adopted by a college professor who ended up dying in a car wreck. so he ended up being taken in by a different family that doesn't understand him. Dixie, the titular sophomore sleuth, is the sole reporter for the school newspaper.
The story Dixie's trying to uncover is a student athlete doping scandal, though his newspaper adviser has ordered him to drop it and cover homecoming instead. I had a hard time getting though the book because Dixie is an almost-impossibly naive and clueless kid who reads every situation incorrectly and unfailingly says exactly the thing that will get his ass kicked by the jocks who love to torment him. All in all, the hijinx are wacky, the comedy crude, and the situations completely implausible. Not my thing, but it might well appeal to its target audience of teen boys.
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