strange and random happenstance

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.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Axe Murder, British Country House, Cambridge, Cold Case, Ellingham Academy, Infodump, London, London Eye, Maureen Johnson, Nine Liars, Peter's Friends, Peter's Murderous Friends, Stevie Bell, Summer School, The Box in the Woods

The Box in the Woods by Maureen Johnson
Published by: Katherine Tegen Books
Publication Date: June 15th, 2021
Format: Hardcover, 400 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Solving that which no one else was able to solve should be the biggest high a true crime geek will ever experience. And it is. It just doesn't last. The return to reality was a little harsher than Stevie expected. Spending the summer working at a grocery store at the deli counter isn't exactly the glamorous career she had planned for herself. I mean, the apron doesn't even go with her crime solving red vinyl raincoat! Thankfully she is about to be saved from a summer of drudgery by the new owner of a kid's summer camp in the Berkshires. Carson Buchwald is the owner of Box Box, a subscription box company, as in literal boxes, with delusions of becoming a true crime podcaster. Which is why he bought Shady Pines, the new moniker of a camp all true crime enthusiasts know by it's original name, Camp Wonder Falls. In 1978 four local teens who had just graduated high school in nearby Barlow Corners, Massachusetts, all counselors at the camp, were murdered. There was an old hunting blind about four miles from camp where the counselors were known to party. On that fateful July night the revelers, Todd Cooper, Diane McClure, and Sabrina Abbott were stabbed and stacked like cordwood in the hunting blind while Eric Wilde, the local drug dealer, almost made it back to camp. His body was found first. The most disturbing facts about the case were the brutality and the message painted inside the blind; SURPRISE. And yet the case was never solved. It wasn't a drug deal gone bad or the work of local serial killer "The Woodsman" as DNA ruled him out, and a revenge killing just didn't make sense. The case was badly handled and entered the lore of famous unsolved crimes. Which is why Carson wants to hire Stevie. She'd come and work at the camp and solve the case for his podcast. The chance to get away from deli meats means she'll even brave the wilderness. She is so not the outdoorsy type. Which means a support network is needed and Nate and Janelle agree to come with. They are on the case. Unfortunately the town is rather hostile once they realize Carson's intentions. It looks like he was trying to buy them off with a shiny new library. And in a way he was. Because the answer has to be among the townsfolk. It's the only thing that makes sense. Why else was it never solved? Because someone didn't want it solved. That someone isn't Sabrina's sister Allison. She's willing to help Stevie. But that help might cost her her life. Because more than four people have died and the killing will continue unless Stevie connects the dots.

The Box in the Woods is a bit of a reset for this series. The first three books were dealing with one case and all it's connecting repercussions at Ellingham Academy. Here Stevie is removed from that academic setting and into that most classic of teen horror tropes, a summer camp. And as everyone knows the best parts of a summer slasher are technology breaking down and there being nowhere to run. Which makes the seventies the perfect era for the "historical" crime to be set. And thankfully we are all about the historical in this installment and veer away from the hysteria that Stevie's boyfriend David brings in his wake. Seriously, I agree with so many reviewers who are just fed up with him. He brings nothing to the conversation and this book was all the better for his being almost entirely omitted. What really drew me in though was that this small little town and it's summer camp is Gilmore Girls meets Twin Peaks that just happens to shoehorn in a slasher flick and some Nazis. So yes, you might think that sounds all over the place, but if you're the right kind of person, AKA someone who I'd be friends with, you will totally get that all these disparate elements can fit together perfectly if you have the right mindset and sense of humor. Dark humor. But for me this isn't just a series reset it's also a turning point for Stevie. When she was investigating the Ellingham case all the principal characters were dead. She was legitimately investigating a true cold case, as in all the participates were cold in their graves. Here the crime happened in 1978 so, while not recent history weeps the reviewer who was born in that year, it's still a recent enough crime that those people directly affected, like Sabrina's sister Allison, are still alive. This is new and interesting. Stevie has had to deal with the fallout of a case and it's present day repercussions but she hasn't had to deal with the trauma of real people. She's so focused and inward when she's on a case she sometimes doesn't think of the bigger picture. Which is all well and good when it's a true cold case. When the obsession and the drive aren't running over victims. But here she could easily steamroller over someone to whom this case is an open wound. She has to tread carefully. Not just because the actual killer could still be alive but because the family of the victims are in need of support. They can help but there has to be respect and assurances. When dealing with Allison Stevie is growing. She's learning that there's more to solving crime than just the crime. There's the survivors. That aspect is one she needs to work on. But this is a good start.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Berkshires, Camp Wonder Falls, Cold Case, Gilmore Girls, Maureen Johnson, Nazis, Podcast, Seventies, Slasher, Stevie Bell, Summer Camp, Summer School, Survivors, The Box in the Woods, Trauma, True Crime, Truly Devious, Twin Peaks

The Hand on the Wall by Maureen Johnson
Published by: Katherine Tegen Books
Publication Date: January 21st, 2020
Format: Paperback, 384 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Dr. Irene Fenton might have been onto something before her recent immolation. As the Ellingham expert and the author of Truly Devious: The Ellingham Murders her hunches shouldn't be taken with a grain of salt. She believed there was a codicil to Albert Ellingham's will that stipulated that whoever found his daughter Alice, alive or dead, would inherent a large fortune so long as they were not members of Ellingham Academy's school board or somehow involved in her disappearance. And while Call Me Charles, the head of Ellingham Academy, informs Stevie that the codicil does not exist let alone mention the sum of ten million dollars Stevie has to wonder; a codicil would account for the crime spree on campus and it's environs. Why else were Hayes Major, Ellie Walker, and Dr. Irene Fenton killed in freak accidents? No one who was alive when the crime was perpetrated back in the thirties is alive today. Even the likelihood of Alice being alive and well is slim to none. So it comes down to the oldest motive in the world, greed. Someone believes in the codicil and they are willing to kill for it. But Stevie's life is in free fall. Her possibly, maybe boyfriend David has gotten himself beaten up in an attempt to derail his father's presidential ambitions. Her friends are dead. And yet she can't waste any brainpower on anything that isn't the case. It is consuming her. Much as Ellingham Academy is about to be consumed by snow. This blizzard is a once in a century storm and while Ellingham Academy was built to withstand the rigors of a Vermont winter this one might be too much to handle. The school is being evacuated and, due to all the recent tragedies, it will not be welcoming the students back after the storm clears. Ellingham Academy is closing it's doors. But Stevie isn't going anywhere. The case is here so she has to be here. Which means she's staying behind. Which means all her friends along with Dr. Fenton's nephew Hunter are staying behind. They have a killer to catch, a mystery to solve, and a presidential campaign to derail. It might be a lot for anyone else, but for Stevie and her friends it's just another day at Ellingham Academy. It's time to gather the suspects and bring her best Agatha Christie game face. She's about to solve the crime of the century. And who knows, maybe get a codicil conquest...

While this does nicely tie together all the loose threads and captures all the red herrings that Maureen Johnson has tossed about over three books I can't help but feel this volume was a little too contrived. I mean, I know that this series is about a bunch of overachieving teens who solve true crimes and build Rube Goldberg machines for fun, so it's not exactly grounded in reality, but the whole convenience of the blizzard and their absurd hiding out to avoid detection leading up to the denouement felt more Scooby-Doo than Hercule Poirot. But now that I start to think about Scooby-Doo way more than I ever have before, isn't it basically the same setup of an Agatha Christie novel with the pulling off of the mask being the revealing of the culprit in just a cheesier manner? OK, I'm totally now spiraling and rethinking everything about my life with these thoughts, meaning, I've never felt closer to Stevie. I'm with you there girl. Let's spiral together. I mean, I'd accepted the Shakespearean nature of Scooby-Doo thanks to Eddie Izzard, but this is a whole new way of thinking. And maybe I just shouldn't dwell. Maybe I should embrace the Scooby-Doo quality and say that The Hand on the Wall felt a tad trite and that's what's getting me. Because a lot of this book really works and as someone who was watching Scooby-Doo since before she could walk despite never bothering to actually think about it's story structure Maureen Johnson did something unexpected. She surprised me. When I read murder mysteries I almost always figure it out. My mind is built for puzzles and I just put two and two together. Even when I don't figure it out when the killer is revealed I'm kind of like not surprised but accepting, like, oh, this makes sense so of course they are the killer. I knew from about two pages in that Albert Ellingham's right hand man George Marsh orchestrated the whole thing. It was obvious. And the reasoning behind this was I was sure that he was Alice's father and that he and Iris were having an affair. But here's where it got deliciously complicated. George was Alice's father. He just didn't know. What's more Iris wasn't Alice's mother. Flora Robinson was. Bait and switch and I love it! It also adds the wonderful twist that while Stevie figured out everything, down to Alice's parentage, she isn't eligible to get the reward from the codicil, which was real! Why? Because Alice's DNA doesn't match either Ellingham. Because, well, it wouldn't. Genius.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Agatha Christie, Albert Ellingham, Blizzard, Codicil, Deaths, Eddie Izzard, Ellingham Academy, Hercule Poirot, Last Will, Maureen Johnson, Scooby-Doo, Shakespearean, Stevie Bell, Summer School, The Hand on the Wall, Truly Devious

The Vanishing Stair by Maureen Johnson
Published by: Katherine Tegen Books
Publication Date: January 22nd, 2019
Format: Paperback, 400 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Stevie feels like the world has turned upside down. If there was one person in the world whom she thought she would never be grateful for it's Edward King. The conservative politician with White House dreams whom her parents worship and work for has been a divisive subject for years. And yet here he is in her living room giving her what she most desires in the world, a return ticket to Ellingham Academy. After the tragic death of Hayes Major and the disappearance of Ellie Walker, Stevie's parents pulled her out of Ellingham faster than she thought possible. They never thought she belonged there, hell she was never sure she belonged there, but it's where she needs to be. She needs to solve the Truly Devious case, and if that means making a deal with the devil then so be it. Even if it means spying on David. To be fair, David is the one who dropped the bombshell that he's Edward King's son on her only when his hand was forced. But that can be unpacked another day, what needs to be unpacked now is the tin she found in Ellie's room with new evidence relating to the Truly Devious case. Who exactly are Frankie and Edward and how do they tie into the mystery? Well if anyone alive knows that it's Dr. Irene Fenton. Dr. Fenton wrote THE BOOK on the crime; Truly Devious: The Ellingham Murders. Charles Scott, the head of Ellingham Academy and Stevie's advisor, has arranged for her to be Dr. Fenton's research assistant. Stevie has access to the attics at Ellingham Academy and has been cataloging the items within and therefore can verify china patterns used and other seemingly useless details for an updated edition of Dr. Fenton's book. Because if there's one thing she's quickly learned about Dr. Fenton it's that she is even more obsessed with the Truly Devious case than Stevie herself. Dr. Fenton's house looks like a cliched conspiracy theorist's hideout. But somewhere among all those secreted papers maybe Dr. Fenton has found a new clue, one thing Stevie does learn from her is that there's a secret tunnel in her school lodging. On Halloween Stevie and David and Nate look for the tunnel in Minerva House and find more than they bargained for, Ellie's body. Stevie feels in over her head. Everyone seems to have a secret and none moreso than Ellingham Academy itself. One thing is clear, with all these bodies piling up she might solve the case but she might also end up dead.

This is THE BOOK that made me fall in love with this series. Perhaps I related too strongly to a quirky writer with a few too many cats... and I also have a borderline obsession with moose. But really it was Frankie and Edward that captured my imagination. What I loved is that this book took the ingeniously repurposed Dorothy Parker poem that was viewed as the ominous warning of the crime to come and in fact gave the case it's moniker and turned it on it's head. Which in turn made me think of something else tangentially related and kind of blew my mind as to why I never thought of it before. It's also extra ironic that it has to deal with Jack the Ripper, a case that Stevie views as a little too sensationalized and therefore not for her. So in her book Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed Patricia Cornwell makes a big deal of the fact that the "From Hell" letter which is believed to written by Jack the Ripper was written on the same kind of paper the artist Walter Sickert used, meaning that he must be Jack the Ripper. She has spent millions buying up his artwork and trying to find DNA evidence to prove her point but here Stevie got me wondering, what if Cornwell is right about the letter but wrong about Sickert? Yes, it's commonly believed that the "From Hell" letter is genuine, but what if it's not? What if it was written by a deluded artist and actually had nothing to do with the crime? In other words, the person who writes the letter might not be the killer. This revelation that Stevie stumbles upon with regard to the "Truly Devious" letter and Frankie and Edward just ignited my brain. Coincidences can happen, especially when someone wants to be thought of as evil. If you're two teenagers wanting to be Bonnie and Clyde or an artist wanting to be the most notorious serial killer of all time, wouldn't you do something to try to get that notoriety? In Frankie and Edward's case they didn't know things would play out as they did, but they sure got what they wanted. And this gave me what I wanted. A case I thought was pretty straightforward, a case I figured I had solved, but then Maureen Johnson throws this little wrench in and makes me think, I mean really think. That's why this series is so good, nothing is as it appears and death is a very real possibility. The question is is moose also a possibility?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bonnie and Clyde, Dorothy Parker, Ellingham Academy, From Hell, Jack the Ripper, Maureen Johnson, Moose, Patricia Cornwell, Portrait of a Killer, Stevie Bell, Summer School, The Vanishing Stair, Truly Devious

Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson
Published by: Katherine Tegen Books
Publication Date: January 16th, 2018
Format: Kindle, 432 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Ellingham Academy is known to an elite few in academia for it's unique approach to learning while it is known to everyone who is a true crime aficionado for Truly Devious. Albert Ellingham was rich, eccentric, and a true original. So what do rich, eccentric men do? They carve out the side of a mountain in Vermont and open a school to encourage unique thinking and a love of the game with their home being the crown jewel of the campus that holds parties worthy of Jay Gatsby. But rich men have enemies and Ellingham Academy became the scene of one of the most notorious unsolved crimes of the twentieth century. On April 13th, 1936, Albert's wife Iris and daughter Alice went for a drive and never returned. There was a phone call, a ransom demand, it was paid, a young student, Dottie Epstein, went missing, another phone call, more ransom demanded, it was paid again, Dottie and Iris's bodies were found, a local man became the scapegoat for the murders but all believed he was innocent, Alice was never seen again. And then there was the letter signed "Truly, Devious." In 1938 Albert Ellingham died in a tragic boating accident with his confidant George Marsh. The Truly Devious case has never been solved. Surprisingly, in all the years since the tragedy, Ellingham Academy is still flourishing, not letting the past blight the present. They still look for the best and the brightest to offer a unique and tailored two year education. Stevie Bell is part of the incoming class. Who would have thought that Stevie, a 16-year-old from Pittsburgh raised by right wing conservatives who isn't the most stellar of students would be at Ellingham academy rubbing elbows and sharing digs with authors and internet famous actors and solving the Truly Devious case? Because that is why she is there, that is why she was accepted, she said she was going to solve Truly Devious. And Stevie must be doing something right because the more she investigates the more odd things happen, and soon tragedy will strike Ellingham Academy again. Can Stevie solve a cold case when a current case is threatening her safety and sanity? And will she ever see a moose?

Truly Devious has a split personality disorder. The historic crime is witty and literary and has allusions to Dorothy Parker and F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Lindbergh kidnapping, while the modern half is oozing YA angst the likes of which I haven't seen since I read the dreck that Cassandra Clare calls "writing." And OMG I just looked up Maureen Johnson and she wrote for The Bane Chronicles and Ghosts of the Shadow Market and Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy and is friends with Cassandra Clare! Life actually makes sense! I wasn't just losing my mind. Well, I'm probably still losing my mind but not in regards to this. The problem of this split in the narrative is that I wasn't yet invested in Stevie and her angst and her feelings for David and her panic disorder and instead was just waiting for the story to take me back to the thirties. I wanted to be in that glittering world. I wanted to immerse myself in the Truly Devious crime. I wanted to solve it along with Stevie, only I wanted to do it without really learning anything about her. Which isn't really fair to Stevie, but that's just how it is. But then again, Maureen Johnson doesn't really play fair either. The main complaint I've seen with regard to this book is that the mystery isn't solved. Not the historic or the present day crime are in any way concluded. We are just left with more questions than answers. Which, at the time, only slightly irked me. I had gotten the book from the library and as soon as I finished it I was able to buy the boxed set and was able to continue reading the trilogy so as to solve the crime. But when I told a friend of mine how much I loved the series, which he eventually agreed with, he pointed out the lack of resolution in the first book and how this just wasn't done. And the more I thought about it the more I agreed. I didn't expect the historical mystery to be resolved but the modern mystery needed to be at the very least. I was able to binge these books one right after the other, but imagine having to wait a year between each installment? That could lead to some very disgruntled readers. Thankfully as you read this review, know that you can, over the course of three books, learn whodunit.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Albert Ellingham, Cassandra Clare, Charles Lindbergh, Dorothy Parker, Ellingham Academy, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Maureen Johson, Stevie Bell, Summer School, True Crime, Truly Devious, Unsolved Mysteries, Vermont

The Vanishing Stair by Maureen Johnson
Published by: Katherine Tegen Books
Publication Date: January 22nd, 2019
Format: Paperback, 400 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Stevie feels like the world has turned upside down. If there was one person in the world whom she thought she would never be grateful for it's Edward King. The conservative politician with White House dreams whom her parents worship and work for has been a divisive subject for years. And yet here he is in her living room giving her what she most desires in the world, a return ticket to Ellingham Academy. After the tragic death of Hayes Major and the disappearance of Ellie Walker, Stevie's parents pulled her out of Ellingham faster than she thought possible. They never thought she belonged there, hell she was never sure she belonged there, but it's where she needs to be. She needs to solve the Truly Devious case, and if that means making a deal with the devil then so be it. Even if it means spying on David. To be fair, David is the one who dropped the bombshell that he's Edward King's son on her only when his hand was forced. But that can be unpacked another day, what needs to be unpacked now is the tin she found in Ellie's room with new evidence relating to the Truly Devious case. Who exactly are Frankie and Edward and how do they tie into the mystery? Well if anyone alive knows that it's Dr. Irene Fenton. Dr. Fenton wrote THE BOOK on the crime; Truly Devious: The Ellingham Murders. Charles Scott, the head of Ellingham Academy and Stevie's advisor, has arranged for her to be Dr. Fenton's research assistant. Stevie has access to the attics at Ellingham Academy and has been cataloging the items within and therefore can verify china patterns used and other seemingly useless details for an updated edition of Dr. Fenton's book. Because if there's one thing she's quickly learned about Dr. Fenton it's that she is even more obsessed with the Truly Devious case than Stevie herself. Dr. Fenton's house looks like a cliched conspiracy theorist's hideout. But somewhere among all those secreted papers maybe Dr. Fenton has found a new clue, one thing Stevie does learn from her is that there's a secret tunnel in her school lodging. On Halloween Stevie and David and Nate look for the tunnel in Minerva House and find more than they bargained for, Ellie's body. Stevie feels in over her head. Everyone seems to have a secret and none moreso than Ellingham Academy itself. One thing is clear, with all these bodies piling up she might solve the case but she might also end up dead.

This is THE BOOK that made me fall in love with this series. Perhaps I related too strongly to a quirky writer with a few too many cats... and I also have a borderline obsession with moose. But really it was Frankie and Edward that captured my imagination. What I loved is that this book took the ingeniously repurposed Dorothy Parker poem that was viewed as the ominous warning of the crime to come and in fact gave the case it's moniker and turned it on it's head. Which in turn made me think of something else tangentially related and kind of blew my mind as to why I never thought of it before. It's also extra ironic that it has to deal with Jack the Ripper, a case that Stevie views as a little too sensationalized and therefore not for her. So in her book Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed Patricia Cornwell makes a big deal of the fact that the "From Hell" letter which is believed to written by Jack the Ripper was written on the same kind of paper the artist Walter Sickert used, meaning that he must be Jack the Ripper. She has spent millions buying up his artwork and trying to find DNA evidence to prove her point but here Stevie got me wondering, what if Cornwell is right about the letter but wrong about Sickert? Yes, it's commonly believed that the "From Hell" letter is genuine, but what if it's not? What if it was written by a deluded artist and actually had nothing to do with the crime? In other words, the person who writes the letter might not be the killer. This revelation that Stevie stumbles upon with regard to the "Truly Devious" letter and Frankie and Edward just ignited my brain. Coincidences can happen, especially when someone wants to be thought of as evil. If you're two teenagers wanting to be Bonnie and Clyde or an artist wanting to be the most notorious serial killer of all time, wouldn't you do something to try to get that notoriety? In Frankie and Edward's case they didn't know things would play out as they did, but they sure got what they wanted. And this gave me what I wanted. A case I thought was pretty straightforward, a case I figured I had solved, but then Maureen Johnson throws this little wrench in and makes me think, I mean really think. That's why this series is so good, nothing is as it appears and death is a very real possibility. The question is is moose also a possibility?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bonnie and Clyde, Dorothy Parker, Ellingham Academy, From Hell, Jack the Ripper, Maureen Johnson, Moose, Patricia Cornwell, Portrait of a Killer, Stevie Bell, Summer School, The Vanishing Stair, Truly Devious