420 p. : ill., map ; 21 cm..
This well written, well-plotted mystery got plenty of good reviews - and it is interesting and fun to read - but I just didn't love it. Okay, confession, I'm not a huge mystery fan to begin with so that has to figure into the mix. However, I think there is more to it than that. I just didn't feel like there was much "at stake" in this boarding school for elite thinkers mystery.
The story involves students who are at an elite, all-expenses paid boarding school founded by an extremely wealthy man in the 1930s who, not long after opening the school, lost his wife and daughter to kidnappers. Additionally, a student at the school was also killed around that time.
Some students come to the school to write novels, direct plays, create art, or just be brilliant and eccentric, but one student is there with her project being to solve the kidnapping/murder case which has never been solved. In the course of the novel, we get to know this modern sleuth, Stevie Bell, and witness new and terrible mysteries evolve in real time.
So what's wrong with that? Well, nothing really. I just found that I didn't care all that much, and never really had that reader's bond with a character which (for me) is one of the joys of reading - even escapist reading.
I think I would have been satisfied if instead of this character bond, I had at least had the satisfaction of a plot ingeniously and surprisingly tied up. But that is precisely what does not happen, and my cynical guess is because Johnson's publishers insisted that a trilogy (yes that dreaded rainmaker of YA lit) was necessary. So hold your breath, and wait for book 2 and book 3 of the "Truly Devious" mysteries to have all your questions answered. Or if you have other reads on your shelf demanding attention, just shrug and say, "Whatever happens eventually, is a mystery to me."
