The Hunchback Assignments by Arthur Slade

"A true wretch of a creature crouched in the cage ... On the bottom of the cage a plaque read L'ENFANT DU MONSTRE."

For the last thirteen years of his life, fourteen-year-old Modo has been raised in seclusion at Ravenscroft by Mr. Socrates. Hunchback Modo was found by Mr. Socrates by a traveling freakshow in an orphange near Notre Dame and is purchased by Mr. Socrates when he notices that the grotesque toddler is able to transform his face for limited amounts of time. While at Ravenscroft, he has been tutored by motherly Mrs. Finchley and trained in the martial arts by Tharpa. One day Mr. Socrates determines that Modo is ready to see the world beyond the walls of his windowless rooms and takes him to London. There he abandons Modo in a dangerous part of town with nothing to survive on his own. His first assignment is to either sink or swim.

Octavia Milkweed poses as Audrette Featherstone one night under the pretense of hiring a private detective by the name of Mr. Wellington. Mr. W has never been seen by any of the staff at the Red Boar where he has a room at the top of the stairs. Octavia/Audrette hires Wellington to find out where her brother Oscar goes at night. It soon turns out that Wellington is really Modo. For the past six months, Modo has been working as a private detective with an ad in the London Times. Modo travels through London by walking across the rooftops. On the night he is following Oscar, he stumbles across a meeting of the Young Londoners Exploatory Society. Quite literally, a hornet's nest is stirred up. After escaping death, Modo tracks down Octavia who gets him back to Mr. Socrates.

Turns out Modo passed his test and his first assignment brought to him by Octavia. Modo and Octavia are both agents who work for Mr. Socrates and his secret society. Their job is to find out what the Young Londoners Exploratory Society is and what new steam driven technology they may have created and why experiments are being conducted with humans. Join Modo and Tavia as the race across London to stop the Clockwork Guild's secret weapon.

Modo and Octavia's adventures continue in The Dark Deeps - The Hunchback Assignments 2 is due out on September 14, 2010.

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