Young Adult Literature: Mystery and Thriller

Titles Discussed

The Body of Christopher Creed (2000) by Carol Plum-Ucci

Jellicoe Road (2008) by Melina Marchetta

Down the Rabbit Hole (2005) by Peter Abrahams

Paper Towns (2008) by John Green

Genre Overview

Crime, the basis for mysteries and thrillers, is as old as civilization. The 3,500-year-old biblical Book of Genesis depicts Cain's murder of his brother Abel. Likewise, in one of the world's oldest thrillers, the ancient Epic of Gilgamesh (twelfth century Before the Common Era) pits the titular hero against various natural and supernatural forces.

Since those beginnings, criminals and people who write about the detection and solution of crimes have become more sophisticated. However, the primary motivations for committing crimes, especially murder, have remained consistent: greed, passion, jealousy, revenge, or insanity.

In more recent times, Edgar Allan Poe is generally credited as the creator of the first modern amateur detective in fiction, C. Auguste Dupin, in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841). The genre was greatly advanced with the introduction in 1887 of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's deductive detective Sherlock Holmes. In the mid-1920s, Dashiell Hammett (Sam Spade) and others invented hard-boiled professional private investigators. At the same time, Agatha Christie established the talented amateur female sleuth, Miss Marple. Marcia Muller created the first fictional female professional private detective, Sharon McCone, in the 1970s.

Since the late twentieth century, mysteries have been classified according to tone or focus under various subgenres: cozies, amateur sleuth, private investigator, police procedural, romantic suspense, legal, historical, and noir. Thrillers are similarly categorized as psychological, crime, spy, erotic, or paranormal.

Mysteries and thrillers meet at a common element: suspense, which plays upon the reader's curiosity about what will happen next. A mystery generally involves solving a crime already committed, whereas a thriller generally involves preventing a crime yet to happen. In mysteries, the criminal is usually unknown at the beginning; in thrillers, the antagonist is frequently revealed early. Mysteries often unfold in leisurely fashion, thrillers typically move at breakneck speed, and both ratchet up the tension as the conclusion approaches.

Mysteries specifically aimed at young adults have been popular for over a century, thanks to the late-nineteenth century rise of public education and the spread of literacy. Book packager Edward L. Stratemeyer took advantage of this trend by introducing several long-running series featuring teens involved in crime-solving. Most popular were amateur sleuths, the Bobbsey Twins (1904), the Hardy Boys (1927), and Nancy Drew (1930).

Contemporary young adult mysteries, while drawing upon tradition, are more realistic than their predecessors in language and subject matter. In the twenty-first century, young adult mysteries, employing modern innovations like smartphones, computers, and social media, focus upon personal aspects of the adolescent experience—concerns about identity, relationships, family issues, substance abuse, bullying, or suicide—while telling the story. Because of the youth of the protagonist, the most plausible subgenre is still amateur sleuth. The novels The Body of Christopher Creed (2000), Jellicoe Road (2008; previously published in Australia as On the Jellicoe Road, 2006), Down the Rabbit Hole (2005), and Paper Towns (2008) illustrate the different ways authors develop unique stories from a similar plot starting point: a young person attempting to solve a conundrum.

Works

Carol Plum-Ucci's Printz Award–winning The Body of Christopher Creed presents the amateur sleuth in a frame story, with a short opening and conclusion bracketing a long flashback. Narrator Victor “Torey” Adams, completing his high school senior year in a new town, recalls the previous year, when he lived in Steepleton, New Jersey, was popular, and had a girlfriend, a garage band, and a relatively stable life. Then he lost everything.

The catalyst was Torey's obnoxious, universally despised classmate Christopher “Chris” Creed, who suddenly vanishes after sending an email to the school principal hinting that he might commit suicide. Torey, who had been cruel to Creed, feels guilty about his possible role in the disappearance and begins gathering clues to the whereabouts of Creed or his body. A bandmate hacks a computer to retrieve Creed's note, which leads to further evidence. Torey forms an alliance with Ali McDermott, a girl with a bad reputation. She is dating petty criminal Bo Richardson, a “boon”—a student from a poor, rural environment—who is more responsible than he appears and who contributes special skills to the search. The unlikely trio uncovers clues that suggest what happened to Creed and are tied to an earlier disappearance.

The amateur investigation reveals a multitude of secrets beneath Steepleton's placid exterior. The town police chief is having an affair. Creed's supposedly upstanding parents are exposed as delusional and vindictive. Through their actions, individuals in Torey's circle of friends demonstrate they are shallow and unfeeling. Christopher Creed is shown to have been sexually active. The widely denigrated boons prove to have more honor than the townspeople.

In the denouement, Torey simultaneously solves one riddle and experiences a natural phenomenon—“immaculate decomposition”—that traumatizes him and drives him to a new location, still obsessing about Creed, who leaves tantalizing clues that suggest he is still alive. Author Plum-Ucci, who wrote a sequel in 2011, weaves religiously symbolic names and images throughout the novel. Creed ultimately becomes a Christlike figure sacrificed for the good of an unworthy town riddled with hypocrisy.

Another Printz-winner, Jellicoe Road, takes a different approach to the amateur sleuth motif. Teenage protagonist-narrator Taylor Markham, abandoned by her drug-abusing mother and housed at an orphanage school in the rural Australian town of Jellicoe, is haunted by dreams and memories. Nearby, thirty-something Hannah Schroeder, her guardian, is writing a novel that she allows Taylor to read.

Taylor and the school are girding for the annual territory wars, a contest to control local landmarks. The battle is waged among three groups: Houses, orphanage-school students who are under leaders like Taylor; Townies, local students at a neighboring school who are led by Chaz Santangelo; and Cadets, visiting military school members under the command of the Brigadier. The conflict is complicated by shifting loyalties: Taylor is infatuated with Cadet Jonah Griggs, and Raffaela, who attends Taylor's school, is a Townie. A subplot involving a serial child killer operating in the area serves as a red herring, heightening suspense.

Taylor acts as a reluctant investigator, initially attempting to resolve personal issues. Her activities are punctuated with passages gleaned from Hannah's manuscript, which Taylor pieces together. She eventually comes to an understanding that permeates the novel thematically: past events influence the present and future in unexpected ways.

Taylor's history is linked to a tragedy that happened two decades earlier: a car crash orphaned four children at Jellicoe who, drawn together by circumstance, invented the territory wars. She learns the identity of the orphans. Among them were Hannah and Taylor's mother, Tate. Hannah's brother, Webb, later accidentally killed, impregnated Tate.

The revelations yield several benefits. The relationships Taylor helps forge (including her own with Cadet Jonah) defuse the territory wars. Hannah—who turns out to be Taylor's aunt and no longer has to hide her love for the Brigadier, her childhood friend Cadet Jude Scanlon—helps Taylor realize the value of family, allowing her to reconcile with her mother.

Author Melina Marchetta, a long-time teacher, uses a school setting and realistically placed contemporary social references to illuminate the behavior of young adults and to explore fluid personal relationships, as she also did in Looking for Alibrandi (1992) and Saving Francesca (2003).

Mystery and thriller author Peter Abrahams's Down the Rabbit Hole is the first of three entries in the Echo Falls mystery series, his first series for young adults. Like The Body of Christopher Creed and Jellicoe Road, it features an amateur sleuth: thirteen-year-old protagonist Ingrid Levin-Hill, who eagerly embraces her role as detective. Told in a third-person limited point of view following Ingrid's perspective, the plot revolves around her incidental encounter with local character, Katherine Eve Kovac, known as Cracked-Up Katie, who is subsequently murdered. Ingrid breaks into Katie's house searching for clues, nearly running into an intruder wearing paint-spattered sneakers. She also breaks into the neighboring apartment of two street people suspected of the crime, finds evidence they are innocent, and decides she will solve the murder.

Ingrid cultivates classmate Joey Strade and his father, police chief Gilbert L. Strade, as conduits to inside information. Ingrid and Chief Strade, both Sherlock Holmes fans, quote from the Doyle canon: “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.” Through the chief, Ingrid learns Katie was once engaged to wealthy Phillip Prescott, who left town years before. From the local historian, Ingrid learns Prescott's parents died in a boating accident and that Prescott squandered his inheritance.

A talented thespian, Ingrid auditions for a production of Alice in Wonderland staged at Prescott Hall, now undergoing a major renovation. Ingrid wins the title role. Among the cast is a stranger called Vincent Dunn. The play's director is seriously injured in a piano-moving accident, and Vincent, an experienced actor, takes over production.

Ingrid, looking for clues, discovers Vincent, in paint-spattered sneakers, digging up a human skull in the basement of Prescott Hall. Vincent, actually an obscure actor, murdered and buried Phillip Prescott long ago. Fearing discovery during the hall's renovation, he has returned to clean up his crime. He chases Ingrid, and they fall into the river. The villain dies going over Echo Falls, while Chief Strade arrives in a police boat to rescue Ingrid.

Down the Rabbit Hole references typical teenage concerns: self-image, budding romance, and other issues she discusses with friends via instant messaging. The novel is full of allusions to Sherlock Holmes, including Chief Gilbert L. Strade, who echoes Doyle's Inspector Lestrade, and Ingrid's dog, Nigel, who is named for Nigel Bruce, the actor who played Dr. Watson in many Sherlock Holmes movies.

John Green's Edgar Award–winning Paper Towns begins with a profound shared experience. As children, playmates Margo Roth Spiegelman and Quentin “Q” Jacobsen stumble across the body of a man who committed suicide. By the time they are high school seniors ready to graduate, the next-door neighbors in Orlando, Florida, have followed divergent paths. Attractive, popular Margo has a boyfriend. Studious Quentin, still a virgin, hangs out with nerds Ben Starling and Marcus “Radar” Lincoln and worships Margo from afar.

Quentin is astonished when, late one night, Margo shows up and convinces him to accompany her. Margo wants revenge because her boyfriend has been sleeping with her best friend. Together, they carry out a series of pranks involving spray-painted graffiti, planting rotting catfish, applying Vaseline to doorknobs, and other stunts. The night is capped by a visit to a building where they overlook the city. Margo flirts with Quentin, telling him, “Here's a tip: you're cute when you're confident.” She calls Orlando a phony “paper town,” a reference that takes on additional significance as the novel unfolds.

The next day, Margo has vanished. Following a visit from a police detective familiar with Margo's history (she has run away before, always leaving clues), Quentin feels obligated to find her. He recruits friends Ben and Radar in the search, and Margo's best friend, Lacey Pemberton, joins them in the quest.

The amateur detectives uncover and connect a multitude of potential clues—a poster of Woody Guthrie, a song, Walt Whitman's poetry, a map—and take many wrong turns before finding a deserted mini-mall where Margo hid out. They come to a possible solution: Margo may be at Agloe, New York, a paper town: a cartographic device in which a fictional location is inserted into a map to detect plagiarizing mapmakers.

The four sleuths subsequently drive nonstop north and find Margo in a deserted barn, all of Agloe that ever existed. Margo had simply fled her stifling environment and intended to go to New York City. She admits she had a crush on Quentin, but he always seemed two-dimensional until he agreed to participate in the prank night. Their friendship renewed, Q and Margo part company but promise to keep in touch.

As the twenty-first century progressed, mysteries and thrillers written for a young adult audience have continued to become increasingly popular with readers. Firekeeper's Daughter (2021) by Angeline Boulley follows Indigenous teenager Daunis Fontaine as she helps federal agents unravel a drug ring ruining her community. The Reappearance of Rachel Price (2024) by Holly Jackson follows the story of Bel as she attempts to solve the mystery of her mother’s disappearance. The Wicked Unseen (2023) by Gigi Griffis combines elements of the mystery genre with supernatural themes. 

Conclusions

Young adults have maintained a healthy interest in reading for entertainment in the twenty-first century. Teens absorb written stimulation via the printed page or on screens through more modern methods (smartphones, tablets, laptops, or e-readers), which, thanks to integral technology, are beginning to provide feedback about individual reading habits. A Publishers Weekly report suggested that when it comes to fiction, the reading preferences of young adults standing on the threshold of adulthood are similar to those who have already made that passage. The trends point to the continued popularity of mystery/detective works and suspense/thriller works.

There is good evidence that the strength of the mystery/thriller genre will continue. Young adults, wearying of the plethora of paranormal, dystopian, and apocalyptic series (Hunger Games, Divergent, Harry Potter, Twilight, Maze Runner, and others) that came into vogue in the early years of the twenty-first century, might opt to read more realistic fiction. This trend should add to the already dominant romantic suspense subgenre as young adults approach the age when lasting relationships form. Another factor helping to solidify the mystery/thriller genre is the tendency among contemporary authors to delve into personal issues (self-image, sexual orientation and gender identity, family matters like coping with infidelity or divorce, thoughts of suicide, or incipient mental illness) with genuine emotion in the course of presenting an intriguing puzzle to solve. Though young adult mysteries and thrillers are defined by their teenage protagonists, many deal imaginatively with grown-up issues as explored by fully rounded characters in convoluted plots layered with symbolic meaning and can thus be enjoyed equally by youngsters and adults.

Such qualities are not, however, universally appreciated. As noted in an American Library Association report, protective parents continually challenge individual works on the basis of sexual content, drug use, violence, offensive language, unsuitability for the age group, perceived promotion of alternative sexual orientations and gender identities, antireligious philosophy, or other matters. Parental objections have resulted in the banning of works by some of the world’s best-known writers, from Shakespeare, Mark Twain, and George Bernard Shaw to Ernest Hemingway, Boris Pasternak, and John Steinbeck. In the twenty-first century, banned works have included titles by authors John Green and Carol Plum-Ucci, who nonetheless continue to thrive.

Bibliography

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Barnes, Jennifer Lynn. “6 Great Y.A. Mystery Novels.” The New York Times, 22 Aug. 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/08/19/books/review/young-adult-mystery-books.html. Accessed 16 Aug. 2024.

Corbett, Sue. “New Trends in YA: The Agents' Perspective.” Publishers Weekly, 27 Sept. 2013, . Accessed 24 Mar. 2014.

“Frequently Challenged Books of the 21st Century.”American Library Association, 2015, www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10. Accessed 24 Mar. 2014.

Milliot, Jim. "The Hottest (and Coldest) Book Categories of 2014." Publishers Weekly, 23 Jan. 2015, www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/65387-the-hot-and-cold-categories-of-2014.html. Accessed 24 Mar. 2014.

Munoz, Lauren. “When Teens Play Detective: The Influence of Golden Age Detective Fiction on YA Mysteries.” CrimeReads, 8 Sept. 2023, crimereads.com/when-teens-play-detective-the-influence-of-golden-age-detective-fiction-on-ya-mysteries. Accessed 16 Aug. 2024.

Wolitzer, Meg. “Look Homeward, Reader.” New York Times, 17 Oct. 2014, . Accessed 24 Mar. 2014.

Zickuhr, Kathryn, and Lee Rainie. “Younger Americans' Reading Habits and Technology Use.” Pew Research Center, 10 Sept. 2014. Accessed 24 Mar. 2014.