Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson (review)

With an essay passionately declaring her love for forensic science and true crime, sixteen-year-old Stevie lands herself a spot at Ellingham Academy, an elite school for highly intelligent (often eccentric) teens. More importantly to Stevie, though, it's the site of one of the greatest unsolved crimes in history: in 1936, the wife and young daughter of the school's founder were kidnapped and never seen again. Stevie's read the books and studied the evidence, and she's sure she can figure out what happened on that April night eighty years ago. Soon, though, Stevie's got a much more pressing case to solve as the murder of one of her classmates sets the isolated campus on edge and casts everyone, students and teachers alike, as possible suspects. The book dishes out each story—Stevie's time at Ellingham and the days leading up to and after the decades-old crime—in alternating chapters, and in both plotlines, Johnson quickly sets the game afoot, skillfully introducing a Clue-like set of characters, laying out various motives, and hinting at long held secrets. There's a delicious slow-burn element to the locked-room mystery in Stevie's present, while the chapters on the kidnappings read much like a true crime novel, with newspaper clippings and police interviews tagging alongside narration of the events of the night of the crime through several different perspectives. The wildly unsatisfying cliffhanger ending ensures a sequel and will leave readers breathless with anticipation. KQG