Review: "Truly Devious" by Maureen Johnson

Quick Summary

Type: Novel, book 1 of Truly Devious series

Genre: Mystery, thriller

Back Cover: "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."

Read Time: 3 days

Rating: 3.75 stars

Review

Part of the reason I read this book was for the same reason I read The Ivies. Fortunately for me, this was better than The Ivies. It still didn't live up to my expectations, which is making me concerned for my current WIP about a murder at a boarding school.

Anyway, this story actually has two mysteries: the cold case of what happened to the Ellinghams, the case Stevie Bell is determined to solve; and the murder of her classmate, which she actually does solve but in the most confusing way possible.

That's the thing that bothered me: I couldn't for the life of me figure out why Ellie murdered Hayes. Because she wrote his YouTube show in exchange for her saxophone? What? I did not get it. And I also don't know how Stevie figured out it was Ellie from the scratches on Hayes's laptop. Yes, it matches the scratches on her hand from under the bathtub, but Ellie's not the only person who lives at Minerva house. Why Ellie? Why not David (besides the fact that he's the obvious love interest).

And why is David so cagey about who his father is? Yes, he's the politician that Stevie hates, but he also seems to hate his father's politics, so couldn't they have bonded over that? I'll tell you why he doesn't tell her anything: because we needed a few red herrings, we needed to wonder if it was possible the hot, mysterious love interest could be a murderer.

And the original mystery, the Ellingham mystery? Yeah, we don't solve that one in this book. This is, I have learned, a series. That's unfortunate, because I didn't particularly care for the Hayes mystery. The Ellingham mystery, however, is very interesting, and that is the entire reason I rated this book 3.75 stars. It's also the only reason I would continue with this series: I want to know what happened to the three Ellinghams. Iris, the wife, is dead and that's known. Albert is also dead, although it's pretty obvious his death was not because of a bomb placed by anarchists. He either killed himself, or he knew Truly, Devious would kill him. Alice may or may not be alive; I'm not sure, and I'd like to find out. Again, only reason I would want to continue with the series.