There are many varieties of mystery/thrillers, but they all have one thing in common. They create intrigue by revealing the identity of the antagonist only at the climax of the story. Mystery writers drop clues throughout the plot to invite readers to solve the puzzle. The Agathas by Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson follows the Agatha Christie format where a murder is committed and teen sleuths identify a number of suspects before finding the culprit. In These Deadly Games by Diana Urban an anonymous perpetrator threatens to kill a 16-year-old esport competitor's sister, unless she follows his orders which target her fellow team members. Social media plays a big part in The Rumor Game by Dhonielle Clayton and Sona Charaipotra which finds an online troll fanning the flames that destroy student reputations. Finally, Sense and Second-Degree Murder by Tirzah Price (Pride and Premeditation), the second in the Jane Austen Murder Mystery series, reimagines Sense and Sensibility. The Dashwood girls, whose detective father is murdered, must work together to find his killer.
In The Agathas, Agatha Christie fan Alice Ogilvie, pulls her own disappearance stunt (much like Christie's) after her boyfriend Steve dumps her for her BFF Brooke Donovan. Hoping to gain sympathy and her neglectful parents' attention, Alice sees her plan backfire when she returns after 5 days and becomes a social pariah. When Brooke disappears after a party where she is seen fighting with Steve, Alice teams up with her peer tutor Iris Adams to solve the case. Alice and Iris co-narrate the story and each chapter begins with a quote from an Agatha Christie mystery. With many twists and turns, the mystery unravels as the teen sleuths solves clues and narrow down the suspect list until the exciting denouement.
As The Deadly Game opens, Crystal and her team of esports gamers are preparing to compete in a MortalDusk tournament, when she receives an anonymous text saying her sister has been kidnapped. She will be killed unless Crystal competes in a deadly real-life game with a 24-hour time limit, targeting her team members. At first she suspects someone is trying to keep them from the competition, but as the hours pass, Crystal realizes Anonymous has discovered a secret from their past and wants to punish them for what they did. She uses her gaming instincts to discover who is behind the game, but not before her teammates suffer the consequences.
The Rumor Games explores from three points of view the rumor mill at Foxham Prep, which can quickly ruin a student's career and social standing. The narrators are Bryn, whose queen bee status is destroyed when she runs her ex-boyfriend's car off the road in a jealous fit; Cora, her best friend and head cheerleader whose boyfriend Baez was hurt in the accident; and Georgie, Bryn's Desai neighbor who went through a transformation after a summer at fat camp. Looking to regain her social status, Bryn takes Georgie to Cora's party, where Georgie is seen going upstairs with Cora's boyfriend. An online troll posts pictures of them together and creates suspicions about Baez's fidelity. As rumors spin out of control, Bryn sees an opportunity to regain her status by starting an anti-rumor campaign through her role as student body president. Told in four parts, "The Rumor," "The Lies," "The Game," and "The Truth," the story examines the role social media can play in rumors destroying reputations and futures. Who is the troll who is fanning the flames?
As with the original, Sense and Second-Degree Murder, a reimagining of Sense and Sensibility, begins with the death of Mr. Dashwood and his second family, including his wife and three daughters, Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret, losing their home to his son by his first marriage. However, Mr. Dashwood ran a detective agency, and his daughters discover he had been poisoned. Marianne, an apprentice detective, and Elinor, a budding chemist, take on the case and discover a network of opium peddlers involved in the complex mystery. All the original characters are cleverly reassigned parts in the plot. In an author's note, the popularity of laudanum in Regency-era England and the lucrative opium trade are explained, as well as some historical inaccuracies that do not deter from the enjoyment of this clever whodunit.
