Nine Liars, Maureen Johnson’s latest mystery in the Stevie Bell series, has her sleuth traveling to England for funzies, only to be caught up in a cold case there. Both the cold case and Stevie’s life are as engaging as always in this gratifying page-turner.
Nine Liars
Maureen Johnson
Harper Collins Publishers
December 27, 2022
Johnson has developed a fantastic formula for the ongoing adventures of a teen detective. After Stevie successfully solved the cold case and related contemporary murders in the Truly Devious trilogy which launched her series, she gets asked to look into other cold cases, such as the summer camp murders in The Box in the Woods and now the English country house murders in Nine Liars.
This is a great premise for YA, as it is theoretically reasonable to ask a smart teenager to do a little research project about a past crime, nothing dangerous. Of course, it always gets dangerous, because that is how fiction works.
Part of the joy of this formula is the way Johnson’s narrative goes back and forth between the events of the cold case several years ago, and whatever Stevie is up to in the present. This creates an endlessly mutable tension between what the reader knows, and what Stevie has to figure out.
In Nine Liars, Stevie’s boyfriend David is studying in London and wrangles a school trip for her and their friends Nate, Janelle, and Vi to come study abroad for a short trip. While they’re there, touristing it up, a local friend of David’s introduces Stevie to a cold case: in the 1990s, two recent college graduates were ax-murdered at a country house they were visiting with seven of their close friends. As Stevie investigates, the mysteries proliferate.
Luckily for readerly engagement, besides being fantastic at solving mysteries, Stevie is a mess. She wears hoodies that she regularly spills things on, and when she gets a blister she stuffs a tissue down the back of her shoe instead of asking for a bandaid. And she certainly would never carry bandaids just in case.
Her life and decisions are often terrible in believable ways, not always endearingly so. The book opens with an extensive sequence of Stevie avoiding doing her reading homework for the next day, a procrastination process that includes friends, cake, makeup video tutorials, and maybe cutting bangs. She decides to invest in a seductive fleece onesie for her time with her boyfriend. Unfortunately, however, she also lies to her extremely supportive friends to get what she wants. She is a complex character we can understand, even when we don’t agree with her.
While Stevie remains believable as a teen who is hyper-competent in one specific field and a dirtbag in others, it feels increasingly certain as the series progresses that the world in which it takes place is some kind of alternate universe.
Reading Nine Liars near the end of 2022, I felt transported to the English manor house murder mysteries of decades past, with no mentions of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Queen’s death, or Liz Truss influencing anybody’s travel or tourism plans in London.
For me, personally, this leant an additional layer of escapism I appreciated. Even though corrupt and hateful right-wing politicians still exist in Stevie’s world, and clearly murders still take place, it seems nice there. There might not be climate change, either.
Overall, reading Nine Liars is a satisfying break from the world.
