Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code

I actually spent part of my Powell's holiday gift on this one because I was in the mood for something really entertaining and yet well-written. Eoin Colfer's protagonist, Artemis Fowl, is a teenage master criminal. Or at least he was in the two previous books (Artemis Fowl and AF: The Arctic Incident). But now that they fairies have helped rescue his father and brought him back to life in more ways than one, Fowl senior is rethinking his previous life of crime and wants his son to follow him in doing good deeds. Artemis wants to score just one more really BIG deal so there will be cushion in the family bank account before he goes straight, however. For once, both Artemis and his loyal bodyguard are outsmarted and outflanked. As they meet the highly shady business mogul, Jon Spiro, to negotiate the sale of a miniature supercomputer Artemis built using stolen fairy technology, Butler is mortally wounded and Spiro steals the computer. Fast thinking and a major dose of fairy magic might be able to save Butler, but the C-Cube computer in the wrong hands will concentrate power in ways too terrible to contemplate AND probably reveal the hidden world of the fairies. The LEPrecon want the computer and all Artemis' memories of the fairy world destroyed in exchange for helping Artemis save his friend--a high price to pay. And it's going to take the genius of Fowl plus the talents of fairies, dwarves and centaurs to pull off this heist.