Nine Liars: Truly Devious, Book 5
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A Lot or a Little?
The parents' guide to what's in this book.
What Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that Maureen Johnson's Nine Liars is a mystery featuring the teen sleuth Stevie Bell from the popular Truly Devious series. Like Book 4, The Box in the Woods, Nine Liars is included as part of that series, but can also be considered a stand-alone mystery. And like all the books featuring Stevie Bell, there are murders to solve and diverse characters facing relatable high school problems, making the books a good fit for high school readers on up. There's excessive drinking and smoking, but mostly in the flashbacks and with the college grad-age characters. The high school characters, 16-year-old Americans in the United Kingdom, are suddenly faced with more legal drinking options. Only one character overindulges and the rest stick to drinks at a pub with meals. A teen couple almost has sex for the first time, with talk of condom use. There's plenty of sexual innuendo and humor -- old friends recalling their college days talk of having a tent in their backyard they called the "shag factory." There's a wide array of swearing, including "f--k," but rarely. The story revolves around the axe murder of two college graduates in the 1990s. There are flashbacks with details of how it happened and how the bodies were found and the shock that followed, but with little gore described. Two women are found drowned with details including a hinted-at sexual assault, a drugging, and one woman being held underwater. The LGBTQ+ community is well represented, with gay and lesbian characters, an asexual character, and a character who uses they/them pronouns. There's some racial diversity among Stevie's friends who are Black and Asian American. Stevie relies heavily on her friends and learns a hard lesson when she lies to them. As usual, her focus on solving a case is admirable. She takes in every detail and communicates her findings with care. And as usual in the series, she frowns upon any sensationalism around crime. She walks away from a Jack the Ripper tour after the guide seems to delight in sharing the gory details.
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What's the Story?
In NINE LIARS, when Stevie Bell's boyfriend David begs her to visit him at his new school in London, they hatch a plan to make it happen. Stevie and her school friends Janelle, Vi, and Nate will visit over the long Thanksgiving break and report back to their school advisor daily about all the museums and landmarks they've toured and all they've learned. After landing in Heathrow, it's all going according to plan until David introduces Stevie to his friend Izzy. Izzy's heard about the famous cases Stevie has solved and tells her about a cold case involving her Aunt Angela and eight of her college friends in the 1990s. Just after graduation two of those friends were killed by an axe at a country manor. And while her aunt rarely talks of it, she let some things slip while on pain medication after a knee surgery, about planted evidence and a missing lock. Next thing Stevie knows, she's invited to Angela's house, or was she? Angela's quite surprised when Izzy shows up with a bunch of Americans. And when Izzy mentions the planted evidence, her aunt clams up and looks panicked. Stevie is convinced Angela doesn't want her meddling, and that she should go on with her trip with her friends and make her advisor happy. And then Angela goes missing.
Is It Any Good?
Popular teen sleuth Stevie Bell stars in this fresh, hip take on the English-country-manor mystery. Author Maureen Johnson always picks the most iconic settings for her cold cases, first a secluded Vermont boarding school in the original Truly Devious trilogy, then a summer camp in The Box in the Woods. Nine Liars splits its time between London and the manor, between the present and the past. In 2022 Stevie arrives in London on a barely sanctioned school trip -- mostly to see her boyfriend David at his new school. In 1995, college friends arrive at an English manor house to celebrate their graduation for one booze-fueled night, one that ends in a double murder. The two storylines converge when Stevie meets David's friend Izzy, the niece of Angela, one of the old college friends. While it's hard to believe, even with Stevie's well-earned reputation, that she would get roped into an investigation in a foreign country at age 16, that's exactly what happens when Angela goes missing. And she's awfully lucky when Angela's safe full of evidence turns up.
The rest isn't luck, however. When Stevie interrogates her subjects she's all business and focus, when she notices things no one else does, she's brilliant as usual. You know she'll solve the case, but at what cost to her friendships and her love life, and how much trouble is she really in at school? Trips to the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey are on their carefully crafted itinerary, not trips to remote country crime scenes surrounded by possible suspects. Scratch that -- one of the remaining college friends is definitely the murderer. Add to all those stressors the real time crunch Stevie is in. She has to find a missing person and solve the cold case, and have a deeply meaningful night in London with her boyfriend before hopping back on the plane in a few days' time. Readers will be as frantic as Stevie to get to the finish line and find out how it all ends.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about all the drinking in Nine Liars. How did the college students in the 1990s approach alcohol consumption? What about the American high schoolers in the U.K., who could drink legally for the first time? What consequences did Sebastian eventually face for heavy drug and alcohol use?
Most high schoolers are already facing choices about their own substance use. What characters have you read about in this book or others that make good choices? What characters make bad ones? What consequences do they face?
In the Acknowledgements section the author says, "I did it. I finally wrote an English country house mystery." Book 4's setting was in a summer camp, and the three books before were set in a boarding school. Where should sleuth Stevie Bell head next? What makes a good setting for crime fiction?
Book Details
- Author: Maureen Johnson
- Genre: Mystery
- Topics: Adventures, Friendship, High School, History
- Character Strengths: Communication, Curiosity
- Book type: Fiction
- Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
- Publication date: December 27, 2022
- Number of pages: 464
- Available on: Audiobook (unabridged), Hardback, iBooks, Kindle
- Last updated: December 18, 2022
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