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A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, #1)

A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Even though the protagonist is about 17 years old and this is an amateur sleuth mystery, it couldn't be more different from Trixie Belden or Nancy Drew (as much as I love them). I think much of that this is written very adult (more so than some adult cozies I've read) or maybe it's very 21st century (keeping in mind my Trixie and Nancy were so not and very much a product of their times).

Pippa has decided to make her senior high school capstone project, looking into a murder that happened in her town. Andie Bell's body was never found. Sal Singh was convicted by the media and the townspeople but he committed suicide in the woods, leaving his family to face five years of scorn and hate. Sal, however, had always been nice to Pippa and she's not sure he was guilty.

Pippa is a good girl (hence part of the title) more interested in studying and early college admission than she is partying. She doesn't know Ravi, Sal's brother, but doesn't let that stop her. She is determined to find out what really happened to Andi and maybe, just maybe, prove Sal innocent. She draws Ravi into the investigation and puts him, her and her family into danger because someone doesn't want her digging up the dirt.

Let me say this, you have a double layer of suspension of disbelief you need to employ. The first is the one you need for any amateur sleuth mystery: that people would actually answer some stranger's questions in regards to a crime. The second is where the hell are the teen's parents? Pippa's parents are insanely permissive but that's pretty much true of any YA action/adventure story. Either the parents are clueless, permissive or missing.

Pippa is intelligent and the mystery is nuanced and layered. It's a bit better than many other mysteries I've read this year in that way. However, I did have some issues with it, mostly with how many insane risks she takes, like meeting drug dealers or trailing the person she thinks is a killer alone (so yes the police are utterly uninterested in this because they think Sal is guilty and she has one of the local small town cops on her suspect list). I'm not sure how it could have been done different but it was a bit jarring.

And now for a spoiler. out in the open because it matters to some people. Pippa has a dog and you guessed it, the dog dies. That part didn't bother me so much (as if not the dog it would have to have been her kid brother, the only thing else she had in her life, or her parents). What bothered me about it was I barely knew the dog existed, he's such a non-entity until we needed to up the game. I think she says hi to it on the few times she's home but really it was lacking impact which was annoying.

I would read the next book in this series I really did like Ravi and Pippa.

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