Clegg, Douglas - Mischief

Periodically, the author places references to the Jack and the Beanstalk fairy tale. The analogy is poor, however.
Jim Hook attends the same prep school as his older brother and their father, both deceased.
Family fortunes are slim, so he struggles to roll with the richer boys.
The decaying school has a whispered history, but that is never developed.
There is a secretive clan, which is so much runny eggs.
Our author name drops Alistair Crowley and Gilles de Rais for no real purpose, unless he read somewhere that those guys are cool!
My opinion – just that – is that Clegg wrote with one beady eye toward a Hollywood pitch.
The dead teenager genre. If so, there ain’t enough meals.