YA mystery author Maureen Johnson is obsessed with the past. At least, that is my impression after reading a number of her books. The Truly Devious trilogy tells the story of wannabe forensic scientist Stevie Bell, who grapples with murders and other horrific events at a gifted school in Vermont, which was also the site of multiple tragedies in the 1920’s. Stevie must research and solve the past in order to figure out what’s going on in the present. Most recently, Johnson simply wallowed in the Golden Age of detective fiction with her delightful (and beautifully illustrated by Jay Cooper) challenge to the reader, You’re the Detective: The Creeping Hand Murder – A Solve-It-Yourself Mystery. 

Evidently another Stevie Bell mystery is on its way, to join a pair of standalones that Johnson released after the trilogy. Before that, however, in 2024 Johnson published a mystery that also merges the past with the present, albeit with a new protagonist, called Death at Morning House. I heard Johnson interviewed about the book on All About Agatha, but it has taken me a while to track the title down and give it a read. 

The Past: It is 1932, and Dr. Philip Ralston of New York City is one of the most famous physicians of his day. He spent much of the first world war in England, where he tended to the sick and adopted six children. He returned to America and married a beautiful stage actress named Faye, with whom he had a son. He then built a compound on Cutter Island, in the Thousand Islands region of the St. Lawrence River where he and the family could spend their summers embracing the healthy lifestyle Ralston espoused. On the newly renamed Ralston Island are a glass-filled mansion called Morning House, a massive playhouse where the children can practice their various specialties (one is a pianist, one a dancer, another an artist), a boathouse and a lagoon where the family swims. 

This seemingly idyllic existence is interrupted by a family tragedy so horrific that the Ralstons pack their bags and leave the island forever, never to return. The question is, were the deaths on Ralston Island accidents, suicide . . . or murder? 

The Present: It is 2024, and teenager Marlowe Wexler has finally scored a date with Akilah, the girl for whom she has pined for three years. Marlowe decides to take Akilah up to the lovely cabin she is housesitting for friends. She even brings a candle to make things romantic. And then the candle explodes, and the cabin catches fire . . . 

More out of embarrassment than anything else, Marlowe accepts a summer job offer to act as a tour guide on a newly reopened island in the Thousand Islands region. Yes, Morning House has finally reopened its doors, and a ghoulish public is clamoring for the gossip and a glimpse at a 92-year-old crime scene. Marlowe arrives at Ralston Island, meets her boss, Dr. Henson, an academic who is doing research on the Ralston family, and the group of local teens with whom she’ll be working. Now, all she hopes is to put some distance between herself and her firebug past – along with the girl she left behind and have a trouble-free summer.

No such luck.

It seems that Marlowe is doomed to be haunted by the past tragedies of Ralston Island and by a more recent death, that of a young man who was very good friends with Marlowe’s fellow workers. The tensions between the group are palpable – and then one of their number disappears.  

Johnson is clearly in well-traveled territory here. The parallel narratives combining two crime stories and dangling the possibility of a connection between them forms the same basic structure as Truly Devious. Personally, I thought the trilogy felt stretched out – but can the same basic idea work as well, or even better, when told in one volume? The answer, I would say is . . . yes, it can work. Only it doesn’t quite work here.

Let’s dwell on the good for a moment. Marlowe Wexler is a delightful character. Her narrative voice is self-deprecatingly funny and intelligent. Here she is waxing over her name: “My name makes it sound like I spend my time lurking around the shadowy alleyways of some big city. One of those alleyways full of old boxes, metal trash cans, and cats that knock things over and make that yowlllll sound. Like there’s a bartender who knows my name somewhere. Like I have three ex-wives and I don’t talk to two of them but there’s something smoldering between me and the third one. We never got over each other. My name is more exciting than I am.”

It’s great to have a book teeming with realistically depicted teenaged characters, including a number of queer characters (in both timelines) whose queerness is not their sole identifier or a “problem.” That’s not to say the characters in the past are anything like those in the present: the era and circumstances inform who these people are. And the adult characters are interesting and important to the plot, even if they don’t appear as much as the teenaged ones. (And why should they?) Plus, the setting – the fictional island nestled within a real-life geographical location, is fascinating and well-incorporated into the action.

Ultimately, though, this is a mystery novel about two sets of circumstances occurring in the same setting, spaced ninety-two years apart. How does that work? Frankly, I didn’t think it worked that well. 

The past case is the better one, although it is not a whodunnit so much as a tragic murder case that unfolds interestingly over the course of the novel. Johnson parses out her twists well – although those of us familiar with a late-40’s classic Agatha Christie novel will probably figure out the identity of the killer and their fate after reading a short passage early in the book. There is a sense of growing disquiet from the moment we meet the family members and learn about Dr. Ralston’s various interests. A reader could guess that things will not go well even if we weren’t informed right at the top, as we are, about the tragedy.

Unfortunately, the link between past and present is tenuous at best. The tragedies that befall the Ralston family merely serve as the reason the present-day characters are assembled, and the mysteries facing them are pretty much what you would find in every “teen clique” mystery ever written by R. L. Stine. For that reason, it’s pretty easy to figure out the culprit, despite a complete lack of clues. 

What the present-day narrative has going for it is Marlowe herself. Her observations of the surroundings and the people inhabiting it, her inner thoughts as she struggles to make peace with the whole fire incident and figure out where she stands with Akilah, and the depths of courage she summons as danger springs up, both from natural and unnatural sources, make Marlowe Wexler a heroine I would love to meet again – hopefully in a stronger mystery.