Truly Devious: A Mystery

Maureen Johnson

Jan 2018 · Truly Devious Book 1 · Sold by HarperCollins

About this ebook

New York Times bestselling author Maureen Johnson weaves a delicate tale of murder and mystery in the first book of a striking new series, perfect for fans of Agatha Christie and E. Lockhart.

Ellingham Academy is a famous private school in Vermont for the brightest thinkers, inventors, and artists. It was founded by Albert Ellingham, an early twentieth century tycoon, who wanted to make a wonderful place full of riddles, twisting pathways, and gardens. “A place,” he said, “where learning is a game.”

Shortly after the school opened, his wife and daughter were kidnapped. The only real clue was a mocking riddle listing methods of murder, signed with the frightening pseudonym “Truly, Devious.” It became one of the great unsolved crimes of American history.

True-crime aficionado Stevie Bell is set to begin her first year at Ellingham Academy, and she has an ambitious plan: She will solve this cold case. That is, she will solve the case when she gets a grip on her demanding new school life and her housemates: the inventor, the novelist, the actor, the artist, and the jokester.

But something strange is happening. Truly Devious makes a surprise return, and death revisits Ellingham Academy. The past has crawled out of its grave. Someone has gotten away with murder. 

The two interwoven mysteries of this first book in the Truly Devious series dovetail brilliantly, and Stevie Bell will continue her relentless quest for the murderers in books two and three.

Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2018 * Junior Library Guild Selection * 2019 YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults Nomination * 2019 ALA's Best Fiction for Young Adults Nomination * Chicago Public Library Best of the Best Books 2018 * Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Young Adult Fiction 2018 * 2018 Nerdy Book Club Young Adult Winner * Seventeen Best YA Book of 2018 * Lincoln Award Nominee * 2020-2021 South Carolina Book Awards Nominee * 2020 Pennsylvania Young Readers' Choice Award Winner

Ratings and reviews

Enjoyable experience for this YA mystery. The goods, which are many: the twists and turns the author puts us through, the characters which are all interesting and are well characterized as the teenagers they are, the two arcs from different timelines, the sense of humour present throughout the book. I really appreciate how her characters are flawed, but in a way that is very real and natural. One of our main protagonists suffers from anxiety, and we see how she deals with it both by herself and with the help of others. The "not so good": the tone is a bit too young :) for me. I am questioning if I should continue or not.

Truly Devious is a uniquely written mystery novel in that there is no mystery being solved as much as it being uncovered at the end. The main character of the novel, Stevie is an aspiring detective - she comes to Ellingham, an elite school for prodigies, because she wants to solve a cold case involving the school’s founder’s family. The story takes place in both times - the present where Stevie is going through the case and the newer murder that happens, and in the past, telling us the events leading to and right after the abduction and murder of the founder’s wife and daughter, and a student of the school. The atmosphere of the book is quite rich - it is an isolated boarding school, there is a small pool of students, there are creepy forests and lake craters and secret tunnels. But unlike a regular novel, it doesn’t focus on the mystery; it is about the people that surround the mystery. Stevie’s development is not to look at just the mystery like a puzzle, but look at it from an emotional perspective, too. For the most part of the book, it eschews traditional mystery tropes - there are barely any clues being uncovered, and as a reader, we are not solving the mystery. It felt a bit frustrating at times, not being the one uncovering the mystery along with Stevie, nor being intimate with what she is deducing from it. She also doesn’t look at a crime scene and catalogue what was unusual or anything - in fact, it plays out more like she is trying hard to be detective. But even so, she manages to solve the present murder of one of her classmates. On a character perspective, Stevie provides mental health representation - she has anxiety and has had panic attacks. There are her housemates, who are big mysteries in themselves. There’s the web series star who seems shady and gets murdered. The artist who has no filter, and no awareness of social constraints. The aloof writer who she befriends, and the builder who is her best friend there. There’s the coding prodigy, who for some reason, likes to insert himself into her life. All of their interpersonal relationships are as much a part of the story as the bigger mystery of whodunnit. For a pack of mostly outcasts, they don’t exactly band together either. Overall, it is intriguing, different and certainly has you wanting for more (it ended in a cliffhanger!) so this one is recommended for mystery lovers. Received an advance reader copy in exchange for a fair review from Katherine Tegen Books, via Edelweiss.

The first chapter was great and had me hooked, but then the story dragged on *very* slowly and I became bored quickly. The flashbacks started to feel very repetitive and I ended up not finishing it. The characters didn't really connect with me. I've heard a lot of great reviews so perhaps this just wasn't the book for me.

About the author

Maureen Johnson is the bestselling author of several novels, including 13 Little Blue Envelopes, the Truly Devious series, the Suite Scarlett series, and the Shades of London series. She has also written collaborative works such as Let It Snow with John Green and Lauren Myracle and the Bane Chronicles with Cassandra Clare and Sarah Rees Brennan. Maureen lives in New York and online on Twitter @maureenjohnson or at maureenjohnsonbooks.com.