Truly Devious takes place at a boarding school because boarding schools always make good places for books. This rural Vermont school takes the "best", but has no strict admission standards. You just ask to get in, and they decide if you should get in. Attending are a budding novelist, an actor, an engineer and an artist. The protagonist feels a little out of place. Her skill is "solving mysteries". And she is drawn to the school for the unsolved kidnappings and murders from the 1930s. (And it also gets her away from her parents who are employed by a right-wing senator)
The budding actor recruits her and the writer to help write a script for him about the murders. He knows that one of the long-closed tunnels from the incident is now opened. They go down there to film. However, things turn tragic as he dies. Now there is a new murder to solve. She finds a real mystery different, but still uses her skills. In the process she also finds a boy and is really caught with emotions there. (However, her sleuthing ends up causing problems.) She gradually comes of age as she solves the mystery. In the end, the book gives some potential answers, but lives more things untied. This is the first book in a series, rather than a fully standalone book.
The third book in the Truly Devious series finally wraps everything up. The author continues to unfold in between the quest to solve the "new murders." While it sometimes feels you are getting the "answers" too soon, it actually just whets your appetite. You know things that went on in the past before the current characters figure them out. However, there are other parts of the current case that are not tied together yet. This works really well. And of course, being a teen novel, there is plenty of conflicting romance that always seems to get in the way. The ending is both surprising and unexpected, yet very satisfying. The primary characters are complex. Alas, the secondary characters can be flat stereotypes (especially the "evil politician" and "artist"). There are also a few events that just happen to occur at the proper time. Sure it is a mystery, but having luck not play such a role would be nice. Do people really have to show up at just the right time over and over again? Luckily, these are minor faults that don't distract too much from the book.
I've read a few of "boarding school" books close together and it is hard to keep them straight. They all involve "gifted" children who are plucked away from their home and do amazing things. In the Truly Devious series, the things involve solving mysteries. This novel eventually picks up where the other one left off. Our heroine is bored silly at home in Pittsburgh. Luckily, the right wing senator (and her parent's employer) comes to encourage her to go back to school. Her parents comply. Back there she gets to spend more time investigating the school deaths past and present. (The novel includes regular interludes of the 1930s to give us details of the past murder.) She gets to meet a professor who wrote "the" book on the murders and is working on new research. Alas, we do not get good vibes from her. Her security guard "friend" warns her not to go exploring. Alas, she does, and ends up finding the dead body of a missing classmate. The security guard eventually leaves. However, she contacts him after she "solves" the original murders. (As readers, we get the "full story" of the original murders as part of an interlude in the story.) Alas, the book seems to end right before the action wraps up. These books were written in cliffhanger fashion and do not stand alone well. A lot of loose threads from the previous book are wrapped up. However, there are many more things opened that we want resolved at the end. And, being a teen book, we also get some interesting interpersonal relationships going that are left in quite a messy state. Oh well. I guess that leaves us eagerly anticipating the next book in the Truly Devious series.
