CASE OF THE SILK KING, THE

Rating:
Summary: Sheer fascination
Review: The series certainly has gone downhill since the glory days. "The Case of the Silk King" is among the best CYOA ever produced.

I don't know if Shannon Gilligan ever wrote another CYOA book, but this one rivals Edward Packard. It loosely takes the real-life story of Jim Thompson, an American silk magnate who disappeared in Thailand, and has the reader pretend to be a young detective asked to track down Thompson years later.

There no real reason tendered for why so many people don't want you to discover the truth, but this minor quibble never distracts from the general quality of the book. It takes the hoary conventions of CYOA books -- especially the use of the exotic locale -- and plays them to the hilt. If I recall correctly (I'm nineteen...it has been years...), you can get killed off by everything from a Bengal tiger to a flash flood if you make the wrong choice.

This is rather unique in the series, in that it takes off on an actual historical happening. CYOA doesn't get any better than this.

(P.S. -- Check out my review of "Your Code Name is Jonah" -- another classic CYOA book. E-mail me...we can talk about the strange hold this series has on the imagination...)