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@Raymond – well paraphrased. 

Chapter 21 – When Gator shows up, my first thought was to try and compare him to previous characters. There were the bikers in Mastermind, which were pretty terrifying. He also gives off a Rootbeer Racinette vibe (LOSING JOE’S PLACE), as it seems like only a matter of time before Eddie and Darius start having bad luck And then there was Shlomo and the rest of the Tigers of Terror from TOILET PAPER TIGERS, but those guys were far too cuddly. There was the guy who crashed his motorcycle in JAKE, REINVENTED, and a series of characters who crashed their hogs through plate glass windows. Gator’s nickname also brings to mind UNPLUGGED. And regarding jealous boyfriends, here we have the real kind, not like from @Raymond’s and Sean’s imagination. Good times. 

About 39 Clues: a while ago @Raymond posted about counting 100 books but not including the MacDonald Hall books. To me it would make much more sense, if we were arbitrarily discounting a group of books, to not count the 39 Clues books. I read them because I’m a completist, and read online summaries of the other books in the series so I would understand what was going on, but to me they are something different. I think the adventure trilogies were about regular kids (with special talents), and Masterminds and Hypnotists are both outside that because they are more of the fantastical side, in a different universe. It’s not like you could read the books and imagine yourself with hypnotic powers or as the genetically engineered offspring of criminals. I wonder how GRK thinks of them, if he puts them in the same category.