My Sister, the Traitor
Becky Black Powell
Author Bio
Perhaps a late bloomer, Becky Black Powell started writing books after a career as a lawyer and nine years of homeschooling her son. She is the author of the Max Williams Adventures Series. The series features Max Williams, a super smart kid who wants to work for the CIA, and his crack team of spies-in-training. Max uses his Aikido skills to help solve mysteries, and depends on his seventy-year old sensei, Mrs. W, for advice.
Mother to a college-aged son who is a gifted Aikidoka, Powell was inspired by the tremendous positive impact his training brought to the entire family. One goal of the Max Williams books is to give back to the Aikido community by spreading the word about this beautiful martial art.
Powell lives in rural Tennessee with her husband, two dogs – Angel, a Jack Russell Terrier, and Scout, a mixed-Lab – and a pond full of koi. When she’s not writing, she enjoys reading, binge watching on Netflix, and being outside with her dogs. She is currently working on a novel for grown-ups, The Magdalene Controversy.
She is always available to answer reader’s questions and comments. You can contact her via e-mail at contact@beckyblackpowell.com
Description
My Sister, the Traitor, the second book of the Max Williams Adventure series, features Max Williams, a super smart kid who wants to work for the CIA, and his crack team of spies-in-training. Max uses his Aikido skills to solve mysteries, and depends on his seventy-year old sensei, Mrs. W for advice.
Sixth grade was a big year for Max. After the big football game at the end of My Neighbor, the Spy, when Max defeated the Reedster with the Heaven and Earth Aikido technique, Max became popular. Instead of being teased and called names as school, Max and his friends were suddenly the guys everyone wanted to be around. Max is one of the best students at Sensei W’s dojo. He even helps Sensei W with a beginner kids’ class. Unfortunately, Max’s ego has gotten a little too big. When Axel, Mrs. W’s nephew, comes to town for the summer, Max sees him as a rival. Smart, popular, and practically a black-belt in Aikido, Axel makes Max envious of all the attention he gets. Even worse – he’s dating Max’s sister, Belinda. But, when Max plots to ruin Axel’s reputation, both boys wind up in the middle of a dangerous crime scene.
Max and Axel must work together to solve the crime before Axel is arrested for arson. Or worse – before Hinky the crime boss finds them. Max doesn’t want to lose Sensei W’s friendship, but he might if he can’t fix the mess he’s made before he ruins Axel’s life and destroys his friendship with Sensei W.
Max solves mysteries with his trademark brand of quirky logic and the uses the principles of Aikido – balance, harmony, and determination in everything he does – eventually.
Book excerpt
1 THE GREAT YEAR
I can’t believe the worst summer of my life came right after the best summer of my life. Things started falling apart as soon as Axel came to town. But, the problem really started before that.
Last summer I thought my neighbor, Mrs. Wakenbaum, was a spy. I hoped I could find proof she was a spy to give to the CIA so they would hire me when I’m old enough. Mrs. W had this strange accent, was a highly skilled fighter – which you have to admit is unusual for an old lady – and took a lot of trips with a very suspicious suitcase. My plan would have worked except it turned out that Mrs. W has absolutely nothing to do with espionage, or spy work for those who don’t speak the lingo. She’s just a very nice neighbor who happens to be from Germany and who happens to be an Aikido sensei who travels all over teaching seminars. Her suspicious suitcase wasn’t suspicious at all. It was just old.
So I didn’t make a big impression on the CIA like I wanted, but I made a great new friend and I learned Aikido. Mrs. W wasn’t even mad that I planned to turn her over to the CIA as an enemy spy. She opened a dojo in town and I’ve been training there all year. I’ve gotten pretty good too. She even lets me help with a class for the little kids once a week. Of course, that’s not necessarily a good thing since Twyla Smith is in that class and Twyla is in love with me. But, that’s getting away from the point.
It was Mrs. W who gave me the idea for surviving the big football game last year before sixth grade started. See, the sixth graders have to play the seventh graders in football. There were a couple of problems with that. One was that my friends – B’Me (short for “Beam me up Scotty”), Bump, and Dillon – had never played football. But, the bigger problem was that, as soon as we walked out on that field, we knew the Reedster planned on pounding us into the ground. Reed Bender had it out for us from the day he moved in across the street from me last summer. He even kicked my dog Rufus in the ribs – that’s how mean he is.
Mrs. W hinted that I should use what we learned in Aikido that summer to keep the Reedster from pulverizing us on the football field. She’s like that. She doesn’t tell you stuff. She makes you figure it out for yourself. All she said to me was “With Aikido, you never know.” But, I figured it out and it worked.
I used a technique called Heaven and Earth. The Reedster wound up flat on his back with me still alive, looking down on him. The sixth graders didn’t win the game, but everybody was so impressed with the Aikido technique that things changed for me and my guys at school the next year. It was better that we ever hoped it would be. Kids came up and talked to us. Not mean-talking, name-calling talk. Nice talk, like they wanted to be around us all the time and sit by us at lunch and be our partner in science class and stuff. We were practically popular. Even girls smiled at me and came up to me and said nice things about my hair or my shirt even though my shirts are just plain old shirts and my hair is just regular hair. (That part kind of freaked me out, to be honest, but mostly I liked it.) I liked being the kid that everyone wanted to be around, the one that people came to when they had problems to solve.
Little kids started asking me to show them Aikido moves. Then, a few kids came to me for help when dogs went missing, or their bikes got stolen. I figure if I’d charged for my problem-solving expertise, I’d be rich by now. But, of course, I didn’t charge the kids anything. I helped out because that’s just the kind of kid I am. A helper. A mystery-solver. A detective. A protector of the American way. A spy-in-the-making. Besides, all this stuff will look good on my job application when I apply to the CIA.
B’Me, Bump, and Dillon have been my best friends forever, and also my crack spy team. They helped with my investigation of Mrs. W and helped me solve kids’ problems at school. But after awhile, I realized it was easier and faster to just do the investigating on my own. We’re still friends but we went our separate ways – me going one way and the other three going their own way all together. But, it didn’t matter. I had my hands full at the dojo and helping out kids at school.
So, things went pretty well for me in sixth grade for a change. I still wasn’t the tallest or strongest guy in class. I was smart, though probably not the smartest. But, I’d beaten the Reedster all by myself and survived, and that was plenty good enough.
I admit I loved the way being a winner felt. I’ve never liked guys who get all gloaty and braggy when they win something. But now I understand how they feel. Being a winner feels better than just about anything else I’ve ever felt before.
Being Mrs. W’s friend feels good too, of course. From the very beginning, even when I believed she was an enemy spy, I felt a strange urge to impress Mrs. W. She makes an awful lot of sense most of the time, which is strange for a grown-up. She’s as tiny as a little girl, with skinny arms and legs and a head full of silver-white curly hair. But she’s as strong as steel and can throw a big man less than half her age to the ground without breaking a sweat. That’s because of Aikido. See, Aikido isn’t about who’s the biggest or the strongest. It’s about balance, focus, and using the other person’s energy to throw them off kilter.
Sixth grade was almost a perfect year. Then, Mrs. W told me her great-nephew, Axel, was coming from Germany as an exchange student for the summer. I was excited about meeting him. Any friend of Mrs. W is a friend of mine, I figured. Boy was I wrong.
Author Website
http://www.myneighborthespy.com