|
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Summary: One day a boy named Johnny Dixon goes on a trip to the field where his grandfather played baseball with his close friend, Professor Childermass. While Johnny is there, the professor tells him a somewhat crazy story about a baseball pitching robot that his grandfather's team wanted to use for practice. Johnny's grandfather was the team's best pitcher, Cyclone Dixon. Cyclone, however, did not want to use the pitching machine, because he did not like its eyes. He thought there was something uncanny about them.
Johnny and the professor know that the pitching robot machine was invented by an insane man, Evaristus Sloane, who is supposedly dead. Suddenly the Professor comes up with a brilliant idea. The Professor is very low on cash, and a great hitter from New York is coming to town for a baseball-hitting contest. The contest would pay $10,000 to any pitcher who could strike the great hitter out. The Professor decides to find the robot and enter it in the contest. He decides that he, Johnny, and Johnny's best friend Byron Ferguson (Fergie) will take a trip to Sloane's abandoned house to find the mysterious robot. When they find the robot and rebuild it, it turns out that the robot does not have a starting power source even after they place the last object -- the EYES -- in the robot.
The next morning, when the professor decides to try to locate the power source of the robot, he finds that the robot has disappeared! The Professor becomes very worried and decides to go to his friend, Dr. Coote, for help. When the professor returns, he has gathered a great deal of information about the robot. He has learned that the robot's eyes are from a living human, and that the robot's creator had to make the Key of Arbraces. Without it, the robot would become unstoppable and eventually murder its creator! When the professor, Johnny and Byron find all of this out, they decide to look for the Key of Arbraces at Evaristus Sloane's old abandoned house.
En route to Sloane's house, they stop to fix a flat tire. At a nearby gas station, they are led into a trap set by Evaristus Sloane himself! Sloane lures the professor and Byron away while kidnapping Johnny so he can finally get his revenge on Johnny's grandfather. The professor and Byron learn of Johnny's kidnapping, and quickly go into action. Because Sloane is not at the gas station, they decide to check his house. When they arrive there, they find Johnny. Sloane has taken him prisoner, and is about to take Johnny's eyes out. They are about to save him when the robot shows up. The robot has a mind of its own and wants to kill Sloane. Sloane, however, has the Key of Arbraces. The professor sticks the Key in the keyhole in the robot's back, stops the robot and saves Sloane, while he, Johnny, and Byron escape unscathed.
The very next day, while Johnny is visiting the eye doctor, he is kidnapped once again -- this time by Sloane's wife. When the professor hears this news, he is dumbstruck. Then the professor reads in the newspaper that the Sloanes have entered their robot in the strikeout contest! When the day of the strikeout contest finally arrives, the professor and Byron are ready to stop the Sloanes' evil doings. The robot comes to the pitcher's mound, and the professor quickly dashes toward it, unsheathing his sword from his cane, and plummets the sword's tip into the keyhole of the robot. The robot suddenly stops moving and falls over. Evaristus Sloane is so flabbergasted when he sees this that he dies of a heart attack on the spot. Mrs. Sloane is arrested, and shortly after that confesses to Johnny's kidnapping and reveals where he is being kept.
The moral is: do not be greedy because it could come back to haunt you.
Booklist: "A unique plot, marvelous characters, non-stop suspense make for deliciously wicked fun."
Amazon.com: * * * * 1/2
Behind the Books: A Closer Look at John Bellairs:* * * * *
