The Girl Is Murder

Gr 7–10—It's 1942 and 15-year-old Iris Anderson's life is in upheaval. Her mother died and his father lost his leg at Pearl Harbor, necessitating their move from the tony Upper East Side to the much less glamorous Lower East Side of Manhattan. She's had to leave private school and begins attending P.S. 110, where a fast crowd, the Rainbows, rule the school. Culture shock abounds as Iris discovers a whole new world that includes dancing the jitterbug at the Savoy Ballroom in forbidden Harlem. She stumbles into a mystery when the disappearance of one of the Rainbows has connections to Chapin, her old school. There are shades of Veronica Mars and Nancy Drew when Iris secretly tries to help her father, now a private detective. In doing so, she builds a rickety house of cards that is in danger of destroying not only her relationships with her new friends, but also the tentative bond she's made with her father. Rachel Botchan excels at giving each character in Kathryn Miller Haines's debut Iris Anderson mystery (Roaring Brook, 2011) a distinctive voice and accent. This straightforward mystery combines a realistic treatment of ethnicity and interesting period details and lingo with nostalgic atmosphere.—Charli Osborne, Oxford Public Library, MI