With their book The Agathas, Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson present a spectacular mystery with a multitude of rich allusions to Agatha Christie. Told from the point of view of both Iris Adams and Alice Ogilvie, the novel is set in Castle Cove, California, a cozy coastal town where a person is either the served or the server and where the town seems curse with missing girls.
Iris, who prefers to fly under-the-radar and has a “keep-to-myself-policy,” resents people like Alice–those who walk around like they live in a golden bubble. But after Alice stole an idea from one of her favorite mystery stories, disappeared for a period of time when her best friend Brooke Donovan stole her basketball-star boyfriend Steve Anderson, but then returned unharmed, people at Castle Cove High School shun her as crazy and for making everyone worry that she had been abducted or murdered. Now, Iris has been assigned to tutor her.
When Brooke suddenly turns up dead, Alice is a likely suspect, but soon the police have arrested Steve. Convinced that he is innocent, Alice manipulates Iris into joining her as a detective to solve the case. A complicated, charming, interesting, but somewhat annoyingly persistent character, Alice is motivated by the possibility of fame and reclaiming her status in town while Iris is motivated by the $50,000 prize money which would help her and her mother escape “the Thing” and Castle Cove for good. Both agree that “Brooke deserves to have someone figure out what really happened to her” (113).
Using reason, logic, psychology, and Alice’s extensive Agatha Christie knowledge, the pair of adolescent detectives pattern their sleuthing after the techniques of Hercule Poirot, the “world-famous detective who solves tons of nearly-impossible-to-solve mysteries” (135). In the process of clue collecting, the girls and their team of “Zoners” encounter not only the dangers but several of the morally gray areas to being detectives.
This murder mystery will keep readers mesmerized as they follow the clue trail to its surprising ending.
- Posted by Donna