Suddenly a Murder

Gr 9 Up–To celebrate the end of high school, Izzy’s best friend, Kassidy, treats her to a week-long vacation on a private island, home to their favorite black-and-white murder mystery film. Along with a group of friends, they make their 1920s party dreams come alive with fancy clothes and opulent jewels, decadent dinners, and lavish parties. It’s all fun and games until Kassidy’s boyfriend is discovered dead in his room. Everyone is hiding something, and everyone is a suspect, especially Izzy, who brought a knife to the party. Locked room murder mysteries can be lots of fun when done well, and while this one is adequate, it slightly misses the mark in its execution. The red herring given in the story’s prologue makes readers feel as though they are not trying to solve who killed Blaine, but rather how he was killed, which is a fun twist on most murder mysteries. The narration ping-pongs between Izzy’s first-person point-of-view in the present and various characters’ flashbacks, which provide necessary context and potential motivations for the murder; however, it also somewhat muddles the story’s pacing. Veteran mystery readers will likely solve the crime before the story’s end, but the setting and characters are quirky enough to still make reading it a good time.