New Young Adult Mysteries

 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.

YA Crime Thrillers - Firekeeper's Daughter, The Project, and Pride and Premeditation

 Mysteries, arguably the most popular genre, take many different forms. From the detective novel to the romantic thriller, suspense-filled mysteries keep readers anxiously turning pages to solve the puzzle. This month I am recommending three wildly different thrillers encompassed by this genre.  Firekeeper's Daughter, a debut novel by Angeline Boulley, is a Native American crime thriller focusing on an FBI investigation into meth overdoses in an Anishinaabe community. The Project by Courtney Summers (Sadie) is a psychological thriller, in which Lo, a young woman who works for an investigative magazine, examines a cult that her sister disappeared into after their parents' deaths in a devastating car accident. Pride and Premeditation by Tirzah Price is a reimagining of the Jane Austen favorite as a murder mystery. 

Firekeepers' Daughter introduces Daunis Fontaine, an 18-year-old native American hockey player, who struggles to reconcile her Anishinaabe father's culture with her white mother's relatives' prejudice.  Although she loves her tribal community, she is denied official citizenship in the Sault tribe due to her mixed parentage.  Her plans to head off to college to pursue a medical degree are put on hold when her uncle overdoses on meth and her grandmother has a stroke.  As meth related deaths continue to mount, Daunis is recruited by the FBI to work undercover to investigate a deadly new form of meth being distributed in the community. Using her knowledge of chemistry and traditional plants, she partners with Jamie, an agent posing as a hockey player new to her brother Levi's team, to source the drug and discover its dealers. The author, an enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, shares key teachings from her culture, including Ojibwe language and a look at the corruption that has led to the meth plague on reservations across the country.  This compelling look at Native American culture woven into a complex criminal investigation is not to be missed!

In The Project Lo Denham is involved in a car accident that killed her parents and leaves her near death.  Her sister Bea prays for a miracle and when Lev Warren, the supposedly divine leader of a cult known as The Unity Project intervenes with a "healing," Lo survives. Bea,  overwhelmingly grateful, joins the cult and disappears from Lo's life. While working for an investigative magazine, Lo witnesses the suicide of one of the cult's members. She begins investigating the cult, hoping to discredit it and reconnect with her sister. However, Lo, who is granted an exclusive interview with Lev Warren, finds her sister is no longer a member, and she is slowly lured into joining the cult herself.  The story moves back and forth in time with Lo narrating the present and Bea flashbacks from her past. Suspense builds as subtle clues about what really happened are revealed, until the horrifying truth is unveiled.  This gripping psychological thriller focuses on what happens when downtrodden and vulnerable people, who are searching for identity and belonging, are preyed upon by opportunistic groups offering healing and salvation.

Pride and Premeditation, the first book in a trilogy which reworks Jane Austen novels as murder mysteries, finds Lizzy Bennet aspiring to a position in her father's law firm.  When the head of a local shipping firm, Charles Bingley, is accused of murdering his brother-in-law, Lizzy attempts to prove him innocent to prove herself to her father.  Although his best friend Fitzwilliam Darcy is Bingley's lawyer, Lizzy searches London for clues and they end up working together to free Bingley and find the real killer. This Regency era mystery will especially delight Jane Austen fans.  The extensive cast of original characters appear in differing roles but still retain their personalities. For instance, Collins is set to inherit the law firm, but is woefully inept as a lawyer, and Lady Catherine de Bourgh is a powerful woman but has devious ties to the shipping world.  In an author's note Price discusses being inspired by Austen and Agatha Christie and acknowledge the liberties she has taken with class and gender roles.  This imaginative suspenseful adaptation will appeal to both murder mystery and Austen fans alike.  It comes out April 6, 2021.