The Murder Notebooks: Killing Rachel

For the last five years, Rose and Joshua have lived with members of their extended families after their parents disappeared during an undercover police operation. Police enquiries have led nowhere, so when they find themselves living near each other in London, Rose and Joshua decide to pursue their own hunt for their parents. With the number of unanswered questions mounting, they are finally told that their parents are dead. But do they trust the police information?

This is the second in a new series from award winner Anne Cassidy, The Murder Notebooks, named after the books which Rose and Joshua pore over to find clues to their parents’ whereabouts. Four books are planned and the extended length allows Cassidy the space to develop character as well as to draw out the mystery of the teenagers’ missing parents. In a Books for Keeps interview, Cassidy has described the importance of emotional reality in her crime writing, and here we get to learn more about both of her central characters. Rose, now at boarding school, begins to renew a typically complicated schoolgirl friendship with an old classmate called Rachel – readers of course will realise immediately that Rachel is unlikely to make it to the end of the book in one piece. When Rachel is found dead, Rose determines to discover the truth about what happened to her friend. Meanwhile her stepbrother is still obsessed with finding out what happened to their parents. But could the two mysteries be related? Is it possible that photos taken by Rachel will prove that their parents are very much alive?

Despite the body count, there is little here that would upset or disturb younger teen readers though the suspense is kept high throughout and a sense of claustrophobia pervades. The book ends with a terrific reveal that will have readers eager for book three, and in all this would serve as an excellent introduction to crime writing.