A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

By Dennis Fischman

You might think that murder is a purely adult topic, but you would be wrong. More and more crime books are about high school students (like the five who are incarcerated). One of us is lyingTeenager (Ingrid Levin-Hill in Down the rabbit holeor even tweens (like the title character in Drew Leclair gets a cluewhich is about character assassination rather than literal murder – but when you're twelve the stakes seem just as high!).

In A Good Girl's Guide to Murderour heroine is Pippa Fitz-Amobi, a high school senior who hopes to one day become a journalist. She lives in a town where a high school girl named Andie Bell was murdered just five years earlier. The solution at the time was for Andie's boyfriend to kill her and then himself.

A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson.
Delacorte Press, 2020, 390 pages.

But did that really happen? Pippa decides to find out. She reopens the cold case and conducts her own interviews and investigations – for her final project!

If that sounds a bit unlikely, remember that Pippa knew the young man who allegedly committed the crime and that he was always kind to her. Of course, that's not a good enough reason to think he's innocent, but it's a good reason for her to wonder – and find out. His younger brother Ravi is convinced of his innocence and becomes Pippa's partner in solving crimes (and eventually other things too).

Pippa would have been my girlfriend in high school, but as an adult the risks she takes just drive me crazy. Nevertheless, she is smart and the right things are important to her. A normal sense of danger arises at the right developmental age. Her parents are also decent adults, which is unusual for this genre, but not in real life – the apple doesn't fall far from the tree!

It's ironic that lately I've been reading adult crime novels where the killer's motivation makes no sense, and here is this young adult novel that fully honors human complexity.

There are two more books in this series, but be careful: what happens in book two (which was published in 2020) is traumatic for our dear Pippa. Also for me, because she is close to my heart. I still haven't recovered enough to pick up book three.

Dennis Fischman is a member of the Somerville Public Library Mystery Book Club and an avid reader.