Death at Morning House
by Maureen Johnson
High School    HarperTeen    384 pp.
8/24    9780063255951    $19.99
e-book ed.  9780063255975    $10.99

Johnson’s first standalone mystery since the Stevie Bell universe (Truly Devious, rev. 1/18, and others) introduces readers to Marlowe Wexler, whose moniker “makes it sound…like there’s a bartender who knows my name somewhere” but who is actually quite shy. After she accidentally sets fire to a vacation home while on a date with her dream girl, Marlowe’s summer plans shrink to “evaporating.” So when she is offered a job leading tours of a mansion with a tragic past, she jumps at the chance. Once there, she becomes drawn into the history of Morning House’s cursed Ralston family (two of whose members died on the property on the same day in 1932), the abrupt disappearance of a professor who is writing a book about the Ralstons, and the recent drowning death of a local teen. Marlowe is up to the challenge of tying these disparate threads together—as long as someone doesn’t murder her first. Johnson successfully employs her well-known format of alternating chapters between the past and the present, dropping her detective into a diverse and dynamic friend group, and hinting at some of the dark secrets of America’s past (here, including eugenics). Marlowe’s self-deprecating first-person voice provides a compelling contrast to Stevie Bell’s sardonic tone. Might there ever be a Marlowe/Stevie mash-up? This reviewer remains hopeful.

From the "November/December 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.