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Masterminds (book series)

Masterminds is a middle-grade novel trilogy by author Gordon Korman.

The series consists of:

• Masterminds (2015)
• Criminal Destiny (2016)
• Payback (2017)

Plot

Masterminds

Eli Frieden is living in the perfect town of Serenity, New Mexico, where there is no crime, no poverty, and everyone is employed. One day, on a bike ride out of town with his best friend, Randy Hardaway, Eli suddenly falls ill and is scooped up by a military-style helicopter. In the local "hospital", a small clinic with two beds, Eli wakes up to discover Randy is moving away to his grandparents farm. After not hearing anything from Randy, Eli discovers a secret note by Randy, in which he claims that he was sent to a boarding school in Pueblo, Colorado, and that there is "something fishy" going on in Serenity, and it had something to do with why Eli got sick and Randy did not.

Meanwhile, Malik Bruder and his friend Hector Amani, nearly colide with a cone truck from the local Serenity Plastics Works, a traffic cone producer which employs the majority of the town, and Malik begins to notice that the blood is never cleaned off the cones, and that the shipments of cones never leaves town.

During a thunderstorm, Eli gets two completeley different web pages on the Boston Tea Party. When he confronts his father, Felix, about Randy's note, he suddenly gets a relapse of his recent sickness. On bedrest, he is perscribed pills by Dr. Henry Bruder, Malik's father, which nearly make him forget the letter, leading to his suspicion that his own father and Dr. Bruder made him sick, and tried to make him forget the letter.

Back at school, Malik and Eli discuss the irregularities they have noticed, when Tori Pritel intrudes, and eventually suggests that they investigate the Plastics Works. After they scale the fence outside the factory,