Offbeat doesn’t begin to describe Miller’s caper novel, which centers on simultaneous plots by 17-year-old Kitty Banks and her 11-year-old brother, Kat. When robbers hit the bank owned by their father, Kitty, who’s the bank’s greeter, reacts by mentally rewriting her college admissions essay to describe her heroic actions to foil the thieves. In the real world, Kitty is taken hostage, but she soon turns the tables on her captors, whom she recognizes from school. In an effort to get revenge on her parents, who favor Kat, Kitty leads the crooks to her house to steal her father’s money. Meanwhile, Kat fakes his own kidnapping after he breaks into his mother’s safe and makes off with bags of gold bars. He later tries to convert the precious metal into cash. The plot only gets more ludicrous, and the book only demonstrates how hard it is to successfully mix crime and humor. (BookLife)