My first thoughts on the book were good ones: the title sounded funny and rather odd and made me want to read. It is well presented and the font size is good.

It is set in 1935 but if the date wasn’t at the beginning of every chapter I would have found it hard to tell. The book is all about a twelve year-old boy called Moose who moves to Alcatraz so his Father can work as a prison guard and his younger, autistic Sister, Natalie, can attend a special school in San Francisco. It is a time when the prison is home to notorious criminals like gangster Al Capone. Depressed about having to leave his friends and winning baseball team behind, Moose finds little to be happy about on Alcatraz. He never sees his dad, who is always working; and Natalie's condition, her tantrums and constant needs demand all his mother's attention.

But things look up for Moose as he soon makes friends with the warden's daughter Piper, who has a knack for getting Moose into embarrassing but harmless trouble. She is also friends with Moose’s best friend from school Scout. But Moose soon gets into a clever scheme to get money from the prisoners. This leads to many interesting situations all based on the island of Alcatraz.

I really enjoyed this book: it made me want to turn the page to find out what would happen next. If I could have changed one thing it would have been the date at the start of every chapter. This seems to be rather irrelevant and a bit annoying after a while.

Overall I would rate this book 8.5 out of ten, and would recommend it to anyone looking for a good book about gangsters.