Floors, by Patrick Carman

Floors opens with a prologue in which 15-year-old Merganzer Whippet visits his father's deathbed. His father's final words, spoken to Merganzer, are, "You will prosper in the field of wacky inventions." Unfortunately, or possibly fortunately, Merganzer's interpretation of this statement was inaccurate, as we discover later on.

We fast-forward an unspecified number of years into the life of ten-year-old Leo Fillmore. Leo is the son of Clarence, the caretaker for the Whippet Hotel, which is in New York City. The hotel was the result of Merganzer's forays into the field of wacky inventions. And the inventions are definitely wacky. All of the rooms of the hotel have very over-the-top themes -- there is a cake room, a ponds and caves room, a pinball room, a robot room, a room that is a scale model of Central Park, and those are just some of the rooms that everyone knows about. Then there are the hidden rooms that only Merganzer knows about.

You may notice that Merganzer, Whippet, and Leo are all animal names Fortunately, this is not a general theme, though I do wonder what Carman had in mind with these three names.

We meet the three permanent residents of the Whippet Hotel: LilyAnn Pompadore, a socialite from Texas (and her poorly housebroken dog Hiney); Captain Rickenbacker, a billionaire inventor in his own right; and Theodore Bump, a prolific novelist (who is rumored to write under nine famous pseudonyms). We also meet the rest of the staff: Ms. Sparks, the manager of the hotel; Mr. Phipps, the gardener; Pilar, the maid; and Pilar's son, Remi, who, despite being only ten himself, has just gotten a job as the doorman.

Leo and his dad live in the boiler room of the hotel. They have separate cots with a washing machine between them and the boiler makes noises constantly. There is a desk in the corner, and above the desk is a shark's head that also works as a ticker-tape printer. Requests for Clarence's assistance come out on strips of paper from the shark's mouth. We begin our story, and Leo begins his day, taking Merganzer's six ducks, five drakes and a hen named Betty, for a walk. The ducks live on the roof of the hotel, and there is a dedicated elevator just for them. Today the elevator is more crowded than usual, and it isn't until Leo takes the ducks back out of the elevator that he notices a large purple box is in the elevator with them. The words "for Leo" are written on the box.

The box is the beginning of a sort of scavenger hunt that Merganzer has set up for Leo. Leo will find four boxes through the day, each a different color, and each leading to one of the hidden hotel rooms.

This scavenger hunt is intertwined with the story of Bernardo Frescobaldi, a millionaire who wants to buy the hotel. He has sent his right-hand man, Martin, to the hotel to find someone willing to sabotage the hotel in hopes of making the owner willing to sell. The Bernardo plot is also how Carman exposits some of Merganzer's background.

I just finished my second read-through of the book (I usually read every book twice before I post my review to see how it holds together in the second reading) and I am extremely disappointed to say that Floors loses something the second time through. You know what is going on the second time, so some of the things that seemed to make sense the first time end up being confusing the second time. I ended up docking this book a bluebonnet as a result.

I will check out the second book in the series, 3 Below, though, because I love Carman's writing, and, although Floors was imperfect, I still want to see what happens in the lives of Leo and the other residents of the Whippet Hotel.