Title: Don't Get Caught, Let The Prank War Begin
Author: Kurt Dinan
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Release Date: 1st April 2016
BLURB supplied by Sourcebooks
10:00
tonight at the water tower. Tell no one. —Chaos Club
When Max receives a mysterious invite from the
untraceable, epic prank-pulling Chaos Club, he has to ask: why him? After all,
he’s Mr. 2.5 GPA, Mr. No Social Life. He’s Just Max. And his favorite heist
movies have taught him this situation calls for Rule #4: Be suspicious. But it’s
also his one shot to leave Just Max in the dust…
Yeah, not so much. Max and four fellow
students—who also received invites—are standing on the newly defaced water
tower when campus security “catches” them. Definitely a setup. And this time,
Max has had enough. It’s time for Rule #7: Always get payback.
Let the prank war begin.
Oceans 11 meets The Breakfast Club in this entertaining,
fast-paced debut filled with pranks and cons that will keep readers on their
toes, never sure who’s pulling the strings or what’s coming next.
Buy Links:
Amazon- http://ow.ly/1089vd
Apple- http://ow.ly/108aEM
Barnes&Noble- http://ow.ly/108b7h
BAM- http://ow.ly/108bm3
!ndigo- http://ow.ly/108buQ
Indiebound- http://ow.ly/108bC9
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kurt Dinan has taught high school English for over
twenty-one years, and while he’s never pulled any of the pranks detailed in
this novel, he was once almost arrested in college for blizzarding the campus
with fliers promoting a fake concert. He lives and works in the suburbs of
Cincinnati with his wife and his four children he affectionately refers to as
“the Crime Spree.” Don’t Get Caught is his first novel.
Social Media Links:
Website: http://kurtdinan.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @KurtDinan
EXCERPT
Ellie calls it
Operation Stranko Caper and gives each member of the Water Tower Five code
names related to his or her role.
Adleta is Goon.
Malone is Shadow.
Wheeler is
Potatoes.
Ellie is Crybaby.
And I’m Bleeder.
But at the
moment, waiting for zero hour while standing in the back hallway where I can
view the filled cafeteria, I’m feeling more like Puker because I want to sprint
to the bathroom to vomit up my guts.
And to think this
was all my idea. Here’s Heist Planning 101:
1.Identify your
target. In this case, the target is Stranko’s phone. Clearly he’s investigating
the Chaos Club; the pictures he took in the office prove that. Who knows what
other evidence against them he might have?
2.Formulate a
plan. It took a week of observing Stranko during school (all of us) and after
(thank you, Adleta)
to realize he’s
most separated from his phone during lunch duty. It sits on a table on the
stage next to where Stranko polices the cafeteria. Now, if he were to be pulled
away from the stage...
3.
Practice, practice, practice. The five of us rehearsed
our roles for over a week. The plan isn’t the most complicated, but we only
have one shot at Stranko’s phone.
Our final
run-through of the plan lasted two hours on Saturday, with Ellie and Wheeler
the most excited. Even Adleta, who’s probably risking at least a thousand
push-ups every day for the rest of his life, liked the idea. Malone, go figure,
predicted failure.
“It won’t work,”
she said. “Maybe in a movie, yes, but not in real life it won’t.”
“No, they won’t
see it coming,” I said. “No one expects things like this to happen, and
especially not from us. We’re trying to stay out of trouble, remember? Why
would we risk getting suspended?”
“Max is right,”
Adleta said. “There’ll be too much going on for Stranko to realize what’s
happened. It’s going to work.”
“What if we get
caught?”
“Then we do what
you should do whenever you get busted,” Wheeler said. “We lie our asses off.”
I don’t mind
Malone’s concerns. In fact, I appreciate them. The more I’m around her, the
more I depend on her skepticism. Every heist crew needs someone to point out
the weaknesses in a plan. Malone’s perfect for that. She’s also tech savvy, a
brilliant artist, and athletic as hell. A jack-of-all-trades, really. Or more
like a jill-of-all-trades.
A heist can go
wrong for any number of reasons, the worst of which is the double cross. You
can just never be sure if everyone is really on your side or if they’re working
an angle. I don’t necessarily think anyone in my crew is behind the setup at
the water tower, but the hint of doubt is there. Still, why would someone set
us up to get busted and include him or herself in the busting? It makes no
sense.
We picked Monday
for our heist because that’s the school day where everyone, even the
administration, just slogs through until the final bell. At the time I was
excited, but now it’s nausea city. Reality sucks that way. But I’m not going to
back down and hide in the theater again like I did the day after the water
tower. Not that I could put a stop to our plan if I wanted to. Everyone’s in
position. The pin’s pulled and the grenade heaved. All I can do is try not to
get my head blown off.
On stage, Stranko
reads something on his phone, then places it on the table beside him before
returning to his surveillance. In a lot of ways, thinking of him as a prison
guard is dead-on. The entire building is a prison, with the staff as guards,
students as prisoners, and rules that dictate when we can stand up and leave, talk,
and even go the to the bathroom. The school even has security cameras, which
are positioned in all corners of the cafeteria. I’ve seen the room with the
video monitors though and am not as worried as I might be in a newer school.
The monitors here are in black and white and the images almost blurry, like it
may be the first security system ever created, maybe used back in the Garden of
Eden where God watched a grainy image of Eve heisting that apple.
Then, right on
cue at 11:45, Crybaby, sitting at her usual table near the front of the
cafeteria, pushes her tray aside and puts her head down in her arms.
Step One, the
Split, has begun.
GIVEAWAY
No comments:
Post a Comment