CRIME CLUB

Murder seems to be following 16-year-old Penny wherever she goes.

After her father pleads guilty to murder, Penny is uprooted from her home and sent to live with her aunt in Mudville, a small Ontario town on Lake Erie. Upon her arrival in Canada from the U.S., Penny quickly gets reacquainted with her cousin, Simon, and meets his friends, twins Tara and Brent. The mystery progresses quickly when Penny’s big shaggy dog, Ollie, digs up a human skeleton. At first the teens decide it’s best to keep the bones a secret and investigate on their own, but in Mudville, news spreads fast. Before Penny can blink, police are on the scene and a murder from a couple of decades ago is under investigation. But by digging up the past, they might just find that the murderer is still at large and dangerous. Campbell (The Goddaughter Does Vegas, 2019, etc.) has written a fast-paced, tightly plotted story using simple language to cover areas of high interest to teens such as moving, making friends, dating, and solving crime. This fun thriller is occasionally marred by the characters’ stigmatizing descriptions of a disabled character that are not questioned or discussed in the text. Characters are presumed white.

An accessible thriller for reluctant readers.