Tolog Review: The Girl is Murder

The Girl is Murder
by Kathryn Miller Haines 
reviewed Emily Cupo

Kathryn Miller Haines’ mystery The Girl is Murder follows a young girl named Iris as she navigates a new school, new friends, and a new home after tragedy strikes her family. Set in the autumn of 1942 in New York, during the climax of World War II, she is forced to deal with not only the war’s effects on society, but on her personal life and family too. When the world of private investigation is opened to her, it becomes a new frontier for Iris to explore, and as soon as she immerses herself deep within it, she finds that everything around her is not exactly what it seems.

Born with a silver spoon in her mouth and raised within an ivory tower, Iris finds her life turned upside down when she has no choice but to trade her private, all girls academy on the Upper East Side for a new public school on the Lower East Side, following the sudden death of her mother and her father’s loss of his leg in battle. Though her “walk was mimicked”, her “voice was aped” (15), and at every turn, she is reminded of how she did not belong in a public school, Iris soon found kinship with a fellow social outcast, Pearl. The absence of her beloved mother profoundly affects her, and quickly, Iris began to look for things to add adventure to her life and replace the voids left by the private school friends and mother she lost. After returning from war, her newly handicapped father opens a private investigation business and shortly after hearing him interact with a client one day, Iris takes it upon herself to assist him in his investigations. When one case in particular affects Iris in a personal way, despite the multitude of obstacles, she relentlessly works to find a logical reason for the disappearance of a new acquaintance with a little help from Pearl, the “Rainbows”, a ragtag group who may hold the key to finding the lost boy, and her old friends from private school.

Kathryn Miller Haines deftly created The Girl Is Murder for the young sleuth living inside of all of us, and crafted a storyline very few would dare to tackle. With the use of vivid language and excellent technique, Haines does a wonderful job of illustrating the life of a teen riddled with loss, and at the same time addressing issues like classism in early 20th century America. My favorite component of this book is the strong, resilient young woman Iris is portrayed as, because it is encouraging and empowering to see an author with such finesse use it to give her main characters an authentic, strong voice. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone with a taste for historical fiction based mystery, or suspenseful mystery novels.