Dunc and the Greased Sticks of Doom

Culpepper Adventures #21

by Gary Paulsen

Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . .  Olympic superstar Francesco Bartoli is about to hurl  himself down the face of a mountain in another  attempt to clinch the world slalom speed record.  Cheering fans and snapping cameras are everywhere. But  someone is out to stop him, and Dunc thinks he  knows who it is. Can Dunc get to the gate in time to  save the day? Will Amos survive longer than  fifteen minutes on the icy slopes?

Join best friends  Dunc Culpepper and Amos Binder as they take an  action-packed winter ski vacation filled with fun,  fame, and high-speed high-jinx.

76 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Gary James Paulsen was an American writer of children's and young adult fiction, best known for coming-of-age stories about the wilderness. He was the author of more than 200 books and wrote more than 200 magazine articles and short stories, and several plays, all primarily for teenagers. He won the Margaret Edwards Award from the American Library Association in 1997 for his lifetime contribution in writing for teens.

Reviews

[Josiah · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you haven't heard of the Culpepper Adventures, you might be surprised to learn that three-time Newbery Honoree Gary Paulsen wrote a thirty-book series of wacky, slapstick junior novels in the 1990s. Best friends Dunc Culpepper and Amos Binder have been through a lot in the twenty books leading up to Dunc and the Greased Sticks of Doom. When Dunc's parents decide to visit the Bloody Ridge Ski Resort for Christmas vacation, Dunc invites Amos to join them. Amos is reluctant—every time he and Dunc go anywhere, they seem to get caught up in solving a crime that threatens their lives—but his parents voice no objection to him going away for the holiday. Dunc and Amos have no skiing experience, so they start on the Fuzzy Bunny slope, but a wrong turn sends Amos careering down the Spleen Ripper run, meant for advanced skiers. He survives crashing through the ornate front window of the resort's restaurant, and his wild ride earns him an admirer: five-time Olympic gold medalist Francesco Bartoli, who is at the resort to attempt a skiing world record. Amos is horrified at the thought of ever again getting on skis, but when Francesco offers him free private lessons, Amos can't turn it down. The love of his life, Melissa Hansen, is vacationing here, too; maybe she'll see Amos in action and fall for him. Hey, a kid can dream.

Fun on the slopes turns sinister when Dunc and Amos spot a couple of suspicious-looking guys at the mall. Eavesdropping on their conversation, the boys realize these men plan to sabotage Francesco's skis before his record-breaking run. Dunc and Amos could notify the police, but they might not believe a pair of kids; besides, then Dunc and Amos wouldn't get credit for saving Francesco. Taking their lives into their own hands, the boys are caught by the saboteurs, who lock them up so they won't be able to warn Francesco before he plunges down the Disemboweler, the resort's most extreme ski mountain. But you can't keep Dunc and Amos down for long; escaping imprisonment, they race toward the resort in hopes of preventing Francesco's death, but can they reach him in time to avert a televised tragedy?

I never claimed to love this series, but Dunc and the Greased Sticks of Doom is one of its less impressive entries. The plot is riddled with implausibilities, the action sequences are cartoonishly over-the-top, and most of the new characters Dunc and Amos meet are eccentric beyond belief. It's hard to keep track of who the villains are; first names are used interchangeably with descriptions of their voice styles, and don't always seem to correlate as they're supposed to. On a side note, Dunc seems to display overt symptoms of OCD in these later books of the series; he used to be neat, I guess, but not to the point of dominating his personality. Perhaps this is an example of Flanderization? The Culpepper Adventures had improved a bit in some of the books just before this one, but Dunc and the Greased Sticks of Doom is a step back, and I'd be hard-pressed to rate it even one and a half stars. I love Gary Paulsen as an author, but he's capable of so much better.