He volunteers to help liquidate the portable property of an elderly woman who once sang opera in Europe and finds himself learning more about degenerate art and the German occupation of the Netherlands.

Margaret Kane's two executive allies in The Outcasts are Amedeo Kaplan's godfather and mother here, about fifteen years later, and Vanderwaal family history is one aspect of The Mysterious Edge.

Mysterious Edge is set in the present and primarily in the private residential part of St. Malo, Florida, a fictional navy town.

Amedeo Kaplan and his divorced mother Loretta Bevilacqua have moved from Epiphany, New York to St. Malo, Florida.

From his artist father Jake Kaplan, who lives back north, and many visits to the fine arts institutions of New York City, Amedeo is a novice expert on paintings and drawings.

Konigsburg not only writes about gifted children, she expects her experienced readers to be equally clever, to be comfortable with ambiguity and sophisticated vocabulary (or at least willing to look things up), and to be willing not only to read, but to think.