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No Saints in Kansas by Amy Brashear
4.5★
>i>November is usually quiet in Holcomb, Kansas, but in 1959, the town is shattered by the quadruple murder of the Clutter family. Suspicion falls on Nancy Clutter’s boyfriend, Bobby Rupp, the last one to see them alive. New Yorker Carly Fleming, new to the small Midwestern town, is an outsider. She tutored Nancy, and (in private, at least) they were close. Carly and Bobby were the only ones who saw that Nancy was always performing, and that she was cracking under the pressure of being Holcomb’s golden girl. This secret connected Carly and Bobby. Now that Bobby is an outsider, too, they’re bound closer than ever. Determined to clear Bobby’s name, Carly dives into the murder investigation and ends up in trouble with the local authorities. But that’s nothing compared to the wrath she faces from Holcomb once the real perpetrators are caught. When her father is appointed to defend the killers of the Clutter family, the entire town labels the Flemings as traitors. Now Carly must fight for what she knows is right.
I found the character of Carly entirely too impulsive to be very likable and her "investigation" of the murders might have been more believable if she had been an adult but a 16 year old was just too much. I really liked the way that the author incorporated Truman Copote iinto the fabric of the story. Although this is billed as a "young adult" novel, anyone with an interest in the Clutter murders or small town life will find this novel appealing. Carly is of course, a fictional character,but most of the other characters and situations are based on the actual murders that Truman Copote wrote about in his book [In Cold Blood].
