The second book in the two-part series, 48 Hours: The Medusa Curse is a young-adult fiction book by Australian crime-thriller novelist, Gabrielle Lord. The first book in the 48 Hours series, The Vanishing follows friends Jazz and Phoenix as they embark on rescuing their schoolmate, Anika, from being kidnapped. In the second book, they embark on another mission to solve a crime. This time, a robbery occurs at the beginning of the novel. Art forgeries, hacking, hidden tunnels, corrupt socialites, and teenagers’ ingenious scientific skills contribute to this novel’s fast-paced intrigue.
The Knowledge Institute is a new museum of uncertain financial status founded by Dr Zhang, the father of Jazz and Phoenix’s friend, Mack. The teenagers help out with exhibitions there, as they have a shared passion for the museum’s curatorial focus on pairing cutting-edge technology alongside antiquities. The exhibition, From Ancient Times to Future Worlds for which they are preparing at the beginning of the book is to feature the much talked about Sapphire computer. Its inventor, Sir Robert Grimshaw, claims that it has extraordinary technological capabilities beyond anything that has been seen before.
In the exhibition, Sapphire will be presented alongside the Grimshaw Medusa – an enormous and apparently cursed statue of the gorgon herself: that is, until Sapphire is dramatically stolen before opening night of the exhibition. In the chaos of the theft, Medusa topples and injures Sir Robert, after which the reader is introduced to a range of possible suspects for the crimes, and questions as to whether the statue wields magical powers. Mack pleads for Jazz and Phoenix to use their crime scene know-how (which, in referring to The Vanishing, the reader learns they demonstrated by rescuing Anika from a kidnapper) to find Dr Zhang who has disappeared after the robbery and becomes the police’s prime suspect.
Jazz knows that crucial evidence and the likelihood of solving a crime drastically decreases after 48 hours, hence the title of the series. Each chapter of The Medusa Curse is titled with a decreasing digital clockface countdown to solving the mystery within this timeframe, creating mounting suspense as the story unfolds. There is occasional use of illustrations throughout the book, too – maps of the museum, photos of microscopic evidence, screenshots of video news clips – that give it particular appeal to the young reader.
Jazz and Phoenix fearlessly face a range of challenging feats as they try desperately to solve the crime. Phoenix utilizes cutting-edge technology drawing on his own hacking skills, while Jazz employs more traditional methods such as paper rubbings, though she does make use of the CrimeScene app on her tablet. These complimentary digital and analog crime scene investigation tactics help Jazz and Phoenix find the truth behind the theft of Sapphire and the mysterious provenance of the Grimshaw Medusa. They discover that the items were stolen in order to be copied and sold on the black market by Sir Robert’s own son – socialite Toby Grimshaw – to pay off his gambling debts, along with notorious hacker, Delgado. A corrupt museum security guard, Sammy, assisted in organising the robbery, as well as a key figure in international art forgery based in France, Camille Wolf-Ferarri.
Jazz and Phoenix’s quest and brave actions propel the narrative forward at full speed as the 48-hour countdown comes to a climactic end. They solve the mystery with the help of their school friend, Mike, and prove that Dr Zhang was innocent. They rescue both the Sapphire computer and Grimshaw Medusa, and the exhibition triumphantly goes ahead. At the conclusion of 48 Hours: The Medusa Curse, the reader is eagerly poised for the next installment of Jazz and Phoenix’s crime-solving adventures.