Friday, February 2, 2018

One of Us is Lying – A Clever & Fast-Paced High School Murder Mystery





“She’s a princess and you’re a jock. And you’re a brain. And you’re a criminal. You’re all walking teen-movie stereotypes.”

One late afternoon in Monday, five disparate high-school students walk into detention class for having mobile phones in the classroom. All the five believe the cell phones were planted on them and not theirs. But the mildly techno-phobic Mr. Avery adheres to his ‘no mobile in the classroom’ rule. The five students are respectively: Addy Prentiss, Cooper Clay, Bronwyn Rojas, Nate Macauley, and Simon Kelleher; or as the aforementioned (opening quotes) remark by Simon spells out, ‘princess, jock, brain, and criminal’. After pigeonholing the four under a young adult fiction stereotype, Simon proudly calls himself the ‘Omniscient Narrator’. Alas, Simon doesn’t have much time to narrate things. A strange car accident in the school parking lot makes Mr. Avery to go out. Few minutes later, Simon collapses after having a drink of water and excruciatingly meets his death. It looks like the other four are just in wrong place at the wrong time. But soon they become suspects in Simon’s death, which happens to be premeditated murder. Thus begins the exciting YA murder/mystery One of Us is Lying by Karen McManus (published May 2017) which is advertised as ‘The Breakfast Club meets Pretty Little Liars’.

The novel's Bayview High School is situated in an affluent American suburbia. The kind of sophisticated community, where people desperately try to be part of cliques; where non-conformity and every simple erroneous behavior are harshly judged upon. Ostracized from every popular and beautiful students’ inner-circle, Simon has created a notorious gossip app to provide juiciest tidbits about everyone in school. Over the time, most of Simon’s alleged gossips turn to be veritable facts. He doesn’t give a thought to the consequences about his privacy-invading behavior. Few students’ adolescent life is entirely ruined by Simon’s app and the ensuing social media witch-hunt. And, soon after Simon’s murder, police break into his admin account and find an unpublished post, detailing the secrets or misdeeds carried out by the four students who ended up in detention. Nate is the odd-one-out among the four. He lives with his alcoholic father (mother dead in an accident), and is in probation for dealing drugs. Nevertheless, the other three also has solid reasons to silence Simon. Brownyn is hard-headed academic achiever, aiming for the Yale. Cooper is a locally popular baseball-pitcher, who has great chance to make into major league teams. Addy is known for her good looks, and a member of the school’s most popular and cool circle. How far would these four go to preserve their secrets that may instantly oust them? Or may be they could be perfect scapegoats caught in murderer’s master-plan.

One of Us is Lying unfolds as series of short chapters from four teens’ perspectives, which simultaneously broaden readers’ vantage point and briskly pushes forward the mystery. The book cover and the opening chapter clearly put each character under a stereotype. Hence, the inherent charm of the mystery lies in discovering emotional layers of each character that deftly avoids stereotypes. Within each short chapter, writer Karen brings subtle variations to her characterizations and plants few red-herrings to keep us guessing. By the end, all the four becomes fully realized characters and despite their misdeeds and sullen disposition, we tend to empathize with them. There might be nothing original in the coming-of-age themes (friendship, love, isolation, anxiety, etc) Karen is dealing with here. The whole narrative trajectory that observes and indicts the frenzied media & internet behavior is very familiar too. Yet the writing is graceful and organic enough to hold our attention. Karen McManus largely eschews the mawkish parts of YA novel sensibilities. She extends the novel a tad longer, even after unveiling the identity of Simon’s killer, to keep away from  syrupy‘happily-ever-after’ ending. I wasn’t very convinced (and disappointed) with the final reveal and the big climactic showdown. Nevertheless, this is a wonderful page-turner to be read in a single-sitting over a boring Sunday. 

[Karen McManus’ second YA suspense/thriller novel is scheduled to be released in Fall 2018, and One of Us is Lying is being developed into a series] 

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