The Adventures of the Flash Gang: Episode One: Exploding Experiment (2023)

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I’ve been long overdue to get back into reading some fun and interesting stories, so I was more than happy to check out The Adventures of the Flash Gang: Episode One: Exploding Experiment when offered the chance. It’s a fun book that anyone can enjoy while also leaving you excited for the next entry.

Taking place in a Depression-era 1935 Pittsburgh, we enter the life of an eleven year-old boy named Lewis Carter who is doing his best to survive on the streets after his father, a chemistry professor got called away to a mysterious meeting and never returned. Thankfully Lewis learned how to make his father’s secret “recipe” of various substances that allows him to cause a blinding flash of light, which comes in handy to distract shop keepers to grab some food for himself and to donate to the local soup kitchen.

These flashes of light he’s able to produce end up labeling him as the “Flash Gang” by the local newspapers who think it’s a gang of thieves at work when it’s only him alone. While Lewis is making it through this tough time, he’s also trying to figure out exactly what happened to his father, and one day some people kidnap him who just so happen to know about him and his father’s secret recipe.

Sadly they want to use it for evil by adding other chemicals to it for explosive results. Just when it looks to be the end for Lewis, he’s rescued by an eccentric young girl named Pearl Alice Clavell, who goes around pretending she’s a hero while wearing a sparkling pink tutu and ballet slippers. The two escape and make a plan to figure out who the kidnappers are and what their ultimate goal is while also trying to learn more about Lewis’ father.

It won’t be easy as Pearl has a tendency to talk loudly and get carried away in her hero fantasies, which she gets from a radio show she’s a fan of, as well as Lewis dealing with his asthma attacks that are made worse due to the heavy air pollution. Despite these and other problems, the two will do their best to survive and stop the criminals from carrying out their plan.

I have to admit I really enjoyed my time with this book as I wasn’t expecting it to go in some of the directions it did. Authors M.M. Downing and S.J. Waugh do a nice job making it come off like a classic book for kids at first with likable main characters featuring quirky traits that makes for light humor here and there, but then things shift to more serious topics such as how the Depression is taking its toll on people and the country, murder, and more I dare not spoil.

If you’re looking for something fun and interesting to read that will take you on all sorts of adventures with humor and lots of drama thrown in, you’ll want to grab a copy of The Adventures of the Flash Gang: Episode One: Exploding Experiment. It grabs you and doesn’t let go until it’s epic finale while perfectly setting up things for the next entry, Episode Two: Treacherous Tycoon that releases in March and can’t release soon enough.