New YA Mysteries

 Mysteries are arguably the most popular genre in fiction. In teaching the mystery genre, analyzing the author's use of classic mystery techniques can help students understand why mysteries are such "page turners." Foreshadowing, cliff hangers, and red herrings are just a few of the techniques authors use to keep their readers coming back for more. Several new YA mysteries lend themselves to this analysis. Of course, the prolific Karen McManus has a wonderful new mystery offering, Such Charming Liars, in which a mother-daughter grifter team sets out to do their final job, but they run into unexpected complications. The second book in the Liar's Beach series by Katie Cotugno, Hemlock House, once again has Holiday and Linden investigating a mystery that the police have supposedly solved. Added to the intrigue are feelings that are beginning to surface between the two sleuths. The Champions, the second book in Kara Thomas's Cheerleaders duology finds the football team targeted for murder this time around. Finally, The Debutantes by Olivia Worley is set at Le Masques Ball, the social event of the year for New Orleans elite. Last year's ball queen was murdered and the planners are hoping to avoid such drama at this year's soiree, but it's not to be. 

 In Such Charming Liars Kat and her mother, Jamie, have been living under assumed identities after fleeing her abusive father.  After a two-day unsuccessful marriage to Luke Rooney in Las Vegas, Jamie has been working for a jewelry forging ring helmed by Kat’s pseudo-grandmother Gem.  When Gem takes Kat along on a job, Jamie is furious and wants out. Gem agrees after one last job, heisting a ruby necklace from the wealthy Sutherland family at the patriarch’s 80^th birthday party. Kat tags along on the job and finds out Luke and his son Liam are also attending. Complications quickly arise when Parker Sutherland is found dead with the ruby necklace in his pocket. Kat and Liam join forces, along with Parker’s nephew Augustus to find the murderer.  Twists and turns keep the reader engaged, as one double cross after another confounds their investigation.

Hemlock House, the sequel to Liar’s Beach, finds Linden and Holiday at Harvard investigating the death of Bri, Linden’s girlfriend Greer's roommate.  Bri, Greer’s best friend, is found in Greer’s bed, wearing her clothes, dead of an apparent overdose.  But the drugs found at the scene are not what shows up in the autopsy. Once again Holiday is the calm analytical one in the detective duo. While Linden is suspended after being framed for stealing Greer’s watch, Holiday pieces together the clues and confronts the murderer.  A subplot involving a love triangle between Linden, Holiday and Greer adds spice to the mix. Linden is once again the narrator, whose rash, clueless behavior is reined in by Holiday, his childhood friend and now maybe more.

The Champions, the second book in the Cheerleaders duology, takes place eleven years after the killer of the dead cheerleaders in Sunnybrook is brought to justice.  Hadley has just moved to Sunnybrook and is hoping to become editor of the school newspaper. She is disappointed when she is assigned a story about the school’s championship Tiger football team, which is a positive focus for the town. However, soon after she turns in her story, one of the team members, whom she interviewed, is poisoned, and Hadley begins getting strange emails telling her to stay away from the football team. It is clear that the players have secrets, and when a second player is mysteriously killed, Hadley wonders if someone wants revenge for their sins. 

In The Debutantes Les Masques Ball is the social event of the season for New Orleans elite, even though last year’s queen, Margot Landry, was murdered.  Margot was a wild child, and many people thought her self-destructive tendencies won out. Then this year’s queen, the perfectly poised Lily LeBlanc, disappears after the ball is hijacked by someone in a Jester costume. She sends a text to the Maids on her court, her best friend Vivian, her boyfriend’s sister Piper and April, her frenemy, asking them to meet her the next morning. However, she never shows up.  The three of them must band together to find out why she disappeared and rescue her before she becomes another dead queen. 

New YA Mysteries: Little White Lies, The Guggenheim Mystery, The Cheerleaders and I Do Not Trust You

Mysteries are arguably the most popular genre in fiction. Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys have captivated readers for generations.  In teaching the mystery genre, analyzing the author’s use of classic mystery techniques can help students understand why mysteries are such “page turners.”  Foreshadowing, cliff hangers, and red herrings are just a few of the techniques the authors use to keep their readers coming back for more.  This month I am recommending four new mysteries teens might enjoy.  Little White Lies by Jennifer Lynne Barnes (The Naturals) features Southern belle debutantes sleuthing to solve a variety of mysteries. The Guggenheim Mystery by Robin Stevens (Murder Most Unladylike) reunites 12-year-old detective Ted Spark and his sister with their cousin Salim in NYC to solve an art heist mystery.  Stevens was asked to write the book for Siobhan Dowd who died after writing The London Eye Mystery, the first book in the series. The Cheerleaders by Kara Thomas (Little Monsters) focuses on two teens who attempt to uncover long buried truths about what actually happened when five high school cheerleaders died in separate "accidents" several years in the past. I Do Not Trust You by Laura Burns and Melinda Metz (Crave, Sanctuary Bay), a mystery thriller with a supernatural element, pairs Memphis Engel, a brainy history geek, with Ashwin Sood, a wealthy Brit with dark secrets, in a quest to find the missing pieces for a statue of the Egyptian god Set. 

Little White Lies, the first book in the new Debutante series, introduces eighteen-year-old mechanic Sawyer Taft, who struggles to make ends meet and feels more like a parent than a daughter to her absentee mother.  She is astounded when her estranged Southern belle grandmother shows up, offering her half a million dollars if she participates in debutante season.  Although she is conflicted, Sawyer ultimately accepts.  Not only will the money pay for college, it will also give Sawyer an opportunity to find out who her biological father is.  But she gets a lot more than she bargained for when her newfound friends involve her in kidnappings, theft, and high society scandal. This layered mystery is a fun romp through makeovers, gorgeous clothing, twisted relationships and romantic liaisons. 

In The Guggenheim Mystery Kat and Ted Spark are back, after solving the mystery of their cousin Salim's disappearance in The London Eye Mystery. Now they are visiting him in NYC, where his mother has taken a job at the Guggenheim Museum.  While the three are visiting the museum, a smoke bomb goes off and when the smoke clears, a Kandinsky painting is missing. Salim's mother is being framed for the crime and Ted is determined to clear her name.  Ted, who is on the autism spectrum and has unusually keen observations skills and appreciation of patterns, enlists the help of Kat and Salim to solve the mystery. They use deductive reasoning to work through a list of suspects.Ted narrates their adventures using amusing meteorology metaphors and allusions to Homer's Odyssey.  Well integrated clues help readers to solve the puzzle along with the characters in this engaging middle level mystery. 

The Cheerleaders opens as a a grieving town is coming up on the anniversary of the death of five of their high school cheerleaders. Two died in a car accident, two in a horrific murder and the fifth in an apparent suicide.  The suicide victim's sister Monica begins to suspect that her sister Jen's death was not a reaction to the death of her friends and decides to investigate.  Told in alternating chapters from Monica's first person perspective and Jen's third person flashbacks,  the mystery unravels as Monica looks into some anonymous letters she found in her stepfather's desk, along with her sister's phone. Stepdad was the police officer who killed the supposed murderer. The letters intimate that all is not as it seems.  The car accident and the murders are linked and the real culprit is still at large. Monica becomes obsessed with uncovering the truth, alienating her friends and aligning her with people tied to the mystery.  Jen's chapters slowly reveal her disenfranchisement from her friends  and then horror and guilt over their deaths.  Readers will enjoy guessing the outcome of this complex well-written mystery.

After her archaeologist father's apparent death in a plane crash, Memphis "M" Engel, the protagonist in I Do Not Trust You, throws herself into attempting to finish his life's work: translating an ancient map written in a secret language.  Then she meets Ashwin Sood, a member of a cult which worships the ancient Egyptian god Horus.  He informs her that her father is alive and being held captive by the cult.  He will trade her father for the map which describes the locations of five different pieces of a statue of Set, a relic which has the power to destroy the world.  The statue is sought by not only his cult, but also the cult which follows Set.  Instead, M convinces him to join her on a global search for the missing pieces.  Although they must collaborate to decipher the clues, with her translating the hieroglyphics and providing vast historical knowledge and his providing the funds, they do not trust each other. When his supernatural abilities are revealed, they begin to confide in each other and join forces to thwart the two cults, whose rivalry threatens world collapse.  Their whirlwind travels through the catacombs of Paris, a sacred forest in Norway, the ruins of a submerged temple in Egypt and beyond, make for a suspenseful journey, as readers root for the two to finally trust each other and outwit those who are trying to stop them. I was captivated by all the historical information used to decode clues and lead them from the discovery of one piece after another.  All and all, it's a fun and compelling romantic mystery.