Read time: 4 minutes
📱📖 Read on Kobo | 📃 352 pages
⏱ Duration: 5 hours
🏷️ Publisher: Atlantic Crime
📅 Published: October 14, 2025
📚 Read as part of MOTIVE 2026 Book Festival lineup
Book Blurb:
A town once obsessed with its teenage detectives is forced to revisit its darkest chapter. Decades after a series of brutal murders shattered Edgar Mills and ended the era of its famous teen sleuths, a new killing emerges with chilling similarities. The original detectives—now adults burdened by trauma, guilt, and fractured lives—are pulled back together when the imprisoned killer offers to help, but only if they reunite. As past and present collide, long-buried secrets resurface, and the group must confront what really happened all those years ago—and whether they ever truly solved the case.
Let’s talk … murder!!!
The MOTIVE 2026 lineup dropped, and this book shot straight to my must-read-and-get-signed list. The premise hooked me immediately: Nancy Drew-style teen sleuths, but make it what happens after the fame fades and the trauma sets in. I went in expecting these characters to keep sleuthing into adulthood, naturally. Instead, Tom Ryan delivers something far more compelling. They’ve all stopped. The narrative braids past and present timelines together, showing us both the golden age of the Teen Detectives and their fractured adult lives, and it’s absolutely riveting.
The character work here is immaculate. Alice and Samantha VanDyne, Joey O’Day, Bruce Phillip Kershaw. Each one is brilliantly rendered, their sharp investigative minds shown in full force alongside how differently they’ve processed grief and trauma. Watching them come back together, struggling to trust themselves and each other again, hits hard. There’s not a single dragging moment in this story. The pacing is tight, the tension ratchets up beautifully, and that ending? Twisted. I had an inkling about the killer early on, but Ryan keeps you second-guessing with “wait, is it this person? No, this one?” right up until the final reveal. I almost convinced myself I’d gotten it wrong, which made being right even more satisfying.
Would I recommend it?
If you love mysteries that dig into the psychological aftermath of trauma, complex character dynamics, and timeline-jumping narratives that actually work, this is your book. The Teen Detective concept could’ve been gimmicky, but Ryan uses it to explore how fame, grief, and unfinished business shape us. Plus, that twisted ending delivers.
If You Liked This, Try:
- The Night Swim by Megan Goldin — trauma, justice, and gripping dual timelines
Indiebookstores.ca | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy - The Ivies by Alexa Donne — elite students, dark secrets, and sharp twists
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy - A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson — teen sleuth energy with layered storytelling
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy - The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager — past and present timelines with haunting reveals
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy - Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson — academic setting meets cold-case mystery
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy
Book Links:
Want to purchase this or any of your favorite books while supporting a local bookstore? Consider:
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org
Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy
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