The Viper's Nest

The Viper's Nest

The Viper's Nest
Author	Peter Lerangis
Country	United States UK Canada
Language	English
Series	The 39 Clues
Genre	Children's novel Adventure novel
Published	February 2, 2010 Scholastic
Media type	Print (hardcover)
Pages	190
ISBN
Preceded by	In Too Deep
Followed by	The Emperor's Code

The Viper's Nest is the seventh book in The 39 Clues series. It was written by Peter Lerangis and was released by Scholastic on February 2, 2010. The 39 Clues series is intended for children aged 8–12, and takes the form of a multimedia adventure story spanning 10 books. The stories focus on a brother and sister, Amy and Dan Cahill, and their efforts to piece together clues left by the matriarch of the family, Grace Cahill, upon her death.

The Viper's Nest follows immediately on from the events of the preceding book: In Too Deep. The events are described, below, using in-universe tone. Shocked by the death of Irina Spasky, Dan and Amy venture into danger once again. For the first, they begin to question how much they trust their au pair, Nellie. Later in the book, she regains their trust.

The morse code dashes and dots, along the page margins in the middle of the book, reads: "There is a madrigal watcher".

The book begins the morning after the fire that killed Irina Spasky, who was an ex-KGB and Lucian spy. The two kids are shaken by what had happened, not believing that Irina was on their side, after attempting to kill them earlier in the series. They realize that Isabel has reported them to the police, and they make a quick getaway using Irina’s boat. Dan finds a notebook in Irina’s bag and in it they find the phrase : "I'm with you and you're with me and so we are all together". Using their de-coding abilities, Dan and Amy figure out that the words are actually a song, which points them to Pretoria, South Africa. They are found by the police and Alistair is captured. There, he finds out that the person who framed them is actually Bae Oh. He escapes by faking death by heart failure. Amy, Dan and Nellie safely board a plane to South Africa.

There, they are given a postcard suggesting a connection with Shaka Zulu. As they unravel the history of Shaka, they find out that he was a member of the Tomas branch, and was connected to Winston Churchill. After infiltrating a Tomas stronghold, and steal the Clue, they find that it is gold.They are captured by the Kabras while leaving South Africa. Isabel Kabra offers Dan and Amy to join their family. When they decline, Isabel orders them to be tied in chairs, and chopped to pieces by a spinning propeller.