Truly Devious: A Mystery

As an aspiring detective, Stevie Bell is fascinated by crime, which makes her acceptance to Vermont boarding school Ellingham Academy all the more exciting—Ellingham is the home of a decades-old kidnapping and apparent murder, and the case is one Stevie has studied and been fascinated by for years. On Ellingham’s campus, Stevie is able to explore the places and artifacts of the case she’s only read about. As she works to uncover secrets of Ellingham’s past, however, she stumbles across secrets of the present that create a pressing present-day mystery of their own.

Maureen Johnson carefully weaves together the subtly evolving mystery with the personal dynamics of Stevie’s life, creating a fully realized protagonist whose perspective readers can understand and whose brilliance, thoughtful toughness, humanity, and resolve readers can admire. As secrets rise to the surface in this carefully crafted novel, the pace picks up, becoming more and more page-turning as the events proceed. Johnson closes the novel answering some questions while beginning to pose new ones, leaving readers eagerly anticipating the next novel in the series—and perhaps returning to pore over the details in Truly Devious like detectives hoping to anticipate and uncover what will come next.