Book Review - Maureen Johnson's Nine Liars
Nine Liars by Maureen Johnson
Published by: Katherine Tegen Books
Publication Date: December 27th, 2022
Format: Hardcover, 464 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy
All Stevie Bell's friends are planning their futures but after solving the case of a lifetime she is unsure what to do with her life. It's her final year of high school and she should be thinking about college applications but all she can think about is how much she misses her boyfriend. David is now studying in England. That's a whole ocean away. But he has an idea that gives Stevie life. Ellingham Academy is more than a little indebted to Stevie, what with saving it from closing and all, so he thinks the school would be willing to swing a study abroad program for her and their friends as the school has embraced remote learning in an attempt to keep their students alive. And he's right. Dr. Jenny Quinn, the new director of Ellingham, gives Stevie, Janelle, Vi, and Nate permission. With strict guidelines. This is a cultural trip that will last one week. They will be staying in London at Craven House which is where David lives. It's a hodgepodge of student housing but it fits their needs and Stevie's needs in particular. Because right now Stevie needs some alone time with David. But as soon as they land he's got a thing. You'd think coming across an ocean would be more important than a "thing" but David has always been an enigma. Maybe that's what drew Stevie to him? After a delay David plays the tour guide, culminating at the London Eye where he introduces them to his classmate and study partner, Izzy. Izzy instantly raises Stevie's hackles. She's too nice, too perfect, but then she hands Stevie the best gift, an unsolved murder. Nothing else matters now. This trip has narrowed it's focus down to two objectives, solve the cold case from the summer of 1995 involving Izzy's aunt Angela Gill and lose her virginity to David. Landmarks and tourist traps be damned. Her friends are now there to just cover her ass with Dr. Quinn as she delves into a time when everyone was listening to Blur. "The Nine" were a sketch comedy group that went to Cambridge and lived an entwined and internecine life in shitty student housing. Clothes, food, partners, everything was shared. Their graduation was the end of an era. So in grand fashion they were trooping out to Merryweather, a country manor house owned by the family of one of their cohort, Sebastian Holt-Carey. The rest of the party consisted of Theo Bailey, Noel Butler, Peter Elmore, Angela Gill, Rosie Mortimer, Julian Reynolds, Sooz Rillington, and Yash Varma. They piled into two cars and sped off for the countryside. That night during a drunken game of hide-and-seek with a storm brewing Noel and Rosie were murdered. They weren't found until morning in the woodshed, all evidence washed away. The police assumed it was a failed burglary. No one was ever caught. Which is where Stevie comes in. She's on a tight deadline, but if her friends will just cover for her she might pull off the impossible. Yet again.
As I have mentioned before this series has a split personality disorder. There's the historical crimes that I am drawn to and the YA angst I cringe from. Sadly this volume leaned hard into the cringe while giving us an historical crime I couldn't care less about. So, the historical case, what I am calling Peter's Murderous Friends. This cold case isn't so much a cold case as one left unsolved due to police disinterest. They decided, due to scant evidence and whose house it was, to just chock it up to burglars and leave it at that. As for why "The Nine" didn't want the case to be thoroughly investigated, I think they just didn't want to look too hard at themselves and opted for ignorance. Did they want to have a killer amongst them? No. And ignorance is bliss. So why should we, as readers, care for a cold case that no one else cared for? Especially as we don't have any connection to Noel and Rosie. They are just two of nine characters that were infodumped on us and unlike "good girl" Sabrina Abbot in The Box in the Woods we have no emotional investment, no tie to them. And then, when you get right down to the basic facts, so much of this plays out the same way as The Box in the Woods, with a small group connected to the crime still alive so when something happens it is obviously one of them. I understand the need for modern day stakes, and it worked in The Box in the Woods, but here it felt too contrived. And as for Peter's Murderous Friends? I would have just rather watched Peter's Friends. Because seriously, I love that movie. It is perfection. So when you take the same setup, Cambridge sketch comedy group reuniting at one of their country estates, well, just adding in murder isn't enough. You have to have the same emotional connection as you do to Peter and Rodger and Maggie and all the rest. And that did it in under two hours. Here Maureen Johnson couldn't do it in over four hundred pages! I was so excited for this volume, finally, a county house murder by Maureen Johnson. If there was anyone more excited than her it was me, because a can never get enough of English country houses. But this just didn't work. Aside from being the first author I've read to accurately and logically explain a ha-ha. I just can't get beyond my disinterest verging on hatred of "The Nine." Though in the end I hated Stevie more. I hate what she did to her friends. Constantly lying to them and getting them caught up in schemes that were dangerous all for her obsessions, both murderous and lustful. This wasn't about nine liars, Stevie made liars of them all. The only bright spot I have is that with that cliffhanger of David macking on someone new is that perhaps he can finally be written out.
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