Part of Truly Devious
First published 2022
Stevie Bell's senior year at Ellingham Academy feels empty. David studies abroad in London. Her friends focus on college applications. The major cold case she solved no longer occupies her restless mind. David invites Stevie and her friends to join his study abroad program. His new friend Izzy presents Stevie with an irresistible puzzle. In 1995, nine Cambridge University friends gathered at a country house for a weekend. They played a drunken game of hide and seek. Two friends turned up dead in the woodshed the next morning, killed with an ax. Police blamed a burglary gone wrong. One witness knows better. She saw something that night that proves an outsider didn't commit these murders. Someone among the seven survivors is lying. Stevie must identify which friend became a killer and discover why they struck twice in one deadly night.
Genres: mystery, contemporary, thriller, young-adult, academia
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, fast-paced, puzzle-driven, suspenseful
Tropes: amateur-detective, found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Ellingham Academy, London, Cambridge University, country house
Period: 1995, senior-year
464 pages · Hardcover · Katherine Tegen Books
Content warnings: death, murder, violence