A Good Girl's Guide to Murder
2019
- cold cases (criminal investigation)--fiction.
- murder--fiction.
- mystery and detective stories.
- children's fiction
- murder, fiction
- mystery and detective stories
- criminals, fiction
- young adult fiction, law & crime
- young adult fiction, social themes, prejudice & racism
- young adult fiction, thrillers & suspense
The story
Everyone is talking about A Good Girl's Guide to Murder! With shades of Serial and Making a Murderer this is the story about an investigation turned obsession, full of twists and turns and with an ending you'll never expect. Everyone in Fairview knows the story. Pretty and popular high school senior Andie Bell was murdered by her boyfriend, Sal Singh, who then killed himself. It was all anyone could talk about. And five years later, Pip sees how the tragedy still haunts her town. But she can't shake the feeling that there was more to what happened that day. She knew Sal when she was a child, and he was always so kind to her. How could he possibly have been a killer? Now a senior herself, Pip decides to reexamine the closed case for her final project, at first just to cast doubt on the original investigation. But soon she discovers a trail of dark secrets that might actually prove Sal innocent . . . and the line between past and present begins to blur. Someone in Fairview doesn't want Pip digging around for answers, and now her own life might be in danger.
What it’s like
Brisk, claustrophobic small-town dread, written in a chatty first-person voice that bounces between a teenager's sardonic asides and the clipped format of case notes, transcripts and interview excerpts. The prose feels like a true-crime podcast lived from the inside: quick chapters, short sentences, lists of suspects, a bedroom lit by laptop glow and the flicker of a corkboard covered in pinned photos and string. The sensory world is English suburban in its drabness, grey streets, cramped kitchens, the hush of a town that has stopped talking about anything else, with the tension sharpened by the sense that someone nearby is watching. Mood-wise it sits somewhere between nervy and gripping, a compulsive page-turner for a late-night read or a long train journey, where every short chapter ends on a hook. Violence is off the page and in the past; there is a murder and a suicide at the core, some threatening notes and a frightening confrontation or two, but nothing graphic, and the menace comes from suspense rather than gore. Romance and sexual content are minimal. Emotionally it is about a bright, stubborn young woman who mistakes certainty for courage, and about a community that would rather keep its old story than question it. Written for teen and adult readers who want a clever, fast mystery with a lot of momentum and a strong, funny narrator.
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