Jake McGreevy and Ben Myers are best friends and have been on many adven­tures togeth­er. In this third book of the Jake McGreevy series, the two friends are head­ed to Paris. They have qual­i­fied to com­pete in an elite Le Cor­don Bleu tele­vised bak­ing com­pe­ti­tion, but that’s not the only rea­son they’re trav­el­ing to Paris. They’re also try­ing to fig­ure out who the per­son is in an old fam­i­ly pho­to­graph that Jake received from his moth­er, and they want to under­stand the mean­ing of a strange and cryp­tic sen­tence writ­ten on the back of the photograph.

As they start to fig­ure out the iden­ti­ty of the per­son in the pic­ture and what the sen­tence means, they are led on an adven­ture through­out Paris — includ­ing places they’re not tech­ni­cal­ly sup­posed to be. Will they find what­ev­er the clue on the back of the pho­to­graph is sup­posed to lead them to, or will it be lost to his­to­ry forever?

Writ­ten in acces­si­ble and relat­able lan­guage, this book will appeal to read­ers who have already enjoyed Jake and Ben’s pre­vi­ous adven­tures, as well as a new audi­ence. The chap­ters alter­nate between the boys’ time search­ing for clues to the mys­tery in Paris and com­pet­ing at Le Cor­don Bleu — an excel­lent tech­nique for bal­anc­ing the events and the action. The rela­tion­ship between Jake and Ben is real­is­tic and endear­ing and helps draw read­ers into the sto­ry. While it is not nec­es­sary to read the ear­li­er titles in the Jake McGreevy series (Celtic Run and Chica­go Bound), some of the action in this book alludes to events in those books, so some read­ers may want to read the series in order.

This sto­ry is also an excel­lent intro­duc­tion to some of the more advanced con­cepts of World War II and the Holo­caust and will be suit­able for read­ers who have a basic under­stand­ing of world events which occurred dur­ing that time period.