Books like Maureen Johnson

Sixteen unlikely heirs are summoned to an apartment building and challenged to discover who killed the enigmatic millionaire Samuel Westing. The result is a compact marvel of clues, wordplay, misdirection, and eccentric suspects—exactly the sort of mystery that makes you start keeping notes.

Like Truly Devious, it treats detection as an exhilarating intellectual game without sacrificing character or humor. Raskin’s Newbery Medal winner has inspired generations of fiercely loyal rereaders because its construction is so precise: finishing it only reveals how much fun a second reading will be.

Frankie attends an elite boarding school dominated by traditions, hidden tunnels, and an all-male secret society that regards her as clever but fundamentally unimportant. She decides to demonstrate just how badly they have underestimated her.

This is not a conventional murder mystery; it captures something deeper in Truly Devious—the thrill of watching an audacious girl read an institution more accurately than the people who run it. Lockhart’s sharp, playful novel is also a Printz Honor Book and National Book Award finalist, admired for turning elaborate pranks into a bracing argument about power, recognition, and who gets to make history.

Pippa Fitz-Amobi chooses a closed local murder case for her school project, ostensibly to study the investigation. In reality, she doubts the accepted solution. Interviews, timelines, text messages, and case notes let the reader investigate alongside her, while every answer creates a more dangerous question.

Stevie Bell fans will recognize Pip’s exhilarating combination of discipline, curiosity, and inability to stop digging. Jackson also understands that solving a crime is not merely puzzle work: it changes how a detective sees neighbors, friends, and herself. The novel became a blockbuster series and screen adaptation because it delivers that rare mystery-reader pleasure—the feeling that you, too, might crack the case if you notice one more detail.