Truly Devious (Truly Devious, #1)

by Maureen Johnson

When you have enough power and money, you can dictate the meanings of words.

Stevie knew all of Janelle’s likes: making machines and gadgets, soldering and welding, curating her Pinterest boards of organizational techniques, girls with glasses, YA novels, coffee, cats, and pretty much any television show.

Stevie read the code in this sentence. Much as we love you, we have no idea why you have been accepted into this school, strange child of ours.

Sometimes Stevie felt bad for her parents. Their idea of what constituted interesting was so limited. They were never going to have as much fun as she did.

Where her books were, she was. Get the books right and the rest will follow. Now she could address the rest of the room.

The critical scene of the mystery is when the detective enters. The action shifts to Sherlock’s sitting room. The little Belgian man with the waxed moustache appears in the lobby of the grand hotel. The gentle old woman with the bag of knitting comes to visit her niece when the poison pen letters start going around the village. The private detective comes back to the office after a night of drinking and finds the woman with the cigarette and the veiled hat. This is when things will change.

She had Janelle. And yes, she would solve her case. But now she had another one. Who was David? There was something there. She could feel it under her skin.

Stevie had no fears of the dead. The living, however, sometimes gave her the creeps.