The Girl is Murder
by Kathryn Miller
Haines
Book Description:
Iris Anderson is only fifteen, but she's quickly mastering the art of
deception.
It's the Fall of 1942 and Iris's world is rapidly changing. Her Pop is back
from the war with a missing leg, limiting his ability to do the physically
grueling part of his detective work. Iris is dying to help, especially when she
discovers that one of Pop's cases involves a boy at her school. Now, instead of
sitting at home watching Deanna Durbin movies, Iris is sneaking out of the
house, double crossing her friends, and dancing at the Savoy till all hours of
the night. There's certainly never a dull moment in the private eye business.
Review:
Love mystery? Love historical fiction? Then...you should check
out this book.
Set in the 1940's, this book's atmosphere was
exceedingly well done. The clothes, the slang, the political unrest... I felt
like I'd dropped straight into the forties and I wanted to dance the night away
with the Rainbows! The best part was that even with the slang and the
differences in our culture between then and today, Iris still felt like an
average teenager. I didn't have that horrible disconnect that you can sometimes
get when historical fiction feels too foreign.
Iris was a great character through which to view
the forties. She's Jewish, so considered an outsider, and she's just been
exiled from the richest section of New York City down to a much lower socially
acceptable area because of scandal and economic misfortune... Iris
decides she needs to help her Private Investigator father to close his cases
because their family desperately needs the money and because she can go places
he can't.
Which leads to a new life built on secrets and
lies. Soon Iris is double-crossing "friends" at school and misleading her
father... how long can she keep that up? The answer...not too long. The real
question, though, is will she be able to solve a potential murder before it all
blows up in her face??
