"When Uncle Fred said 'Welcome to Grisly Manor,' he was joking. That was yesterday....Believe me, tonight it's no joke."

Teenager Steve Forrester arrives to spend the summer with his aunt and uncle at their rural motel, expecting a slow, tedious vacation. All of that changes, however, when on his first day running the desk by himself, a strange overdressed man checks in. Steve takes a towel to the man's room and discovers that the man's skin is bright blue, and witnesses him draining energy from a nearby lamp. The Blue Man later kills Steve's uncle and flees, propelling Steve on a cross-country road trip in search of revenge.

I picked this book up at a library sale because it looked like a strange young adult novel, and indeed it is. Possibly darker in tone than other YA books today, The Blue man injects the young main character into a situation involving the death of a loved one at the hands of appears to be an alien, forcing him to grow up quickly as he launches his own manhunt for his uncle's killer. Kin Platt's writing is tight and suspenseful, and he keeps the action moving and the characters interesting and believable. A great read for anyone into action-adventure YA fiction. ( )

Sixteen-year-old Steve Forrester is spending the summer helping out at his uncle's hotel. When a bright blue man checks in and his uncle is attacked, Steve finds himself on the run, on the track of an alien.

Despite the name and other similarities, this is *not* the same character as in Sinbad and Me and The Mystery of the Witch Who Wouldn't. This lacks most of the charm of those later two books, as well. ( )