Very good YA novel. I liked the young girl. The writing kept me interested in what was going to happen. I really disliked all the lying the kids did. It seemed a bit too much. Now I need to order the sequel "The girl is trouble." ( )

Iris’s life changed after the War—and not for the better. When she spots a case at her father’s failing PI that involves a student at her new school, she swipes it, determined to solve it and help him out.

I wanted to give this 3 1/2 stars. I liked it -- I thought it functioned really well as a historical coming of age novel, and the historical elements worked really well. I also liked the story, but I thought that it pulled too many punches to serve as tight mystery. The "Noir" elements were very scarce as well, so to call it a "Noir" seemed innappropriate. (and upon reflection I think this may have been an invention of the marketing department, rather than Haines' original intention)

But the story was strong, and I really liked seeing Iris negotiating the territory of expressing her feelings, and figuring out who she is. I like that even "nice girls" can lie to get what they want, and will drink out of a flask while stomping at the Savoy.

But I will say this: there is a little bit of fat shaming in this book. Now I am particularly sensitive to this, so it may not bother other readers. I don't think Haines had some kind of fat-hating agenda, but the scenes of "Fat Pearl" eating cupcakes made me really really uncomfortable. Keep that in mind for next time, Miss Haines.

Looking forward to the next one, "The Girl is Trouble" ( )

This historical mystery immersed me in New York's Lower East Side in 1942. Iris Anderson is adjusting to lots of changes. Her mother commits suicide, the father she barely knows comes home from Pearl Harbor missing a leg, and she is attending public school for the first time.

Her father has set up his own detective agency after and argument with his brother. His loss of a leg has made many parts of detective work difficult and money is tight. She wants to help her father but he sees her as a child and refuses her help. She decides to help him without his knowledge. When the case she wants to help with is centered around a boy she know at school, she finds it easy to go undercover.

Besides making new friends at her new school, she does meat again with her "best friend" from her old school. She finds her very changed but doesn't know which of them has done the changing.

The mystery has a pretty non-mysterious resolution but Iris's investigations, the atmosphere and attitudes of the time, and her growing acceptance of her new life carry the book.

Fans of historical fiction and mysteries will enjoy this story. ( )

I wanted to like this book more than I did, I’m sorry to say. I feel like the last few historical YA books have been sadly lacking in the historical department, and The Girl is Murder is no exception. While the slang and the clothes and the setting are all very 1940s, the story itself could be told of any teenager anywhere – Iris’s attempts to help support her father, their small family’s slide from middle-class to poor, her rebellious determination to do what she wants and her resentment of a father who was never around. I understand that universality is probably what Haines was going for, but I found it a little disappointing. Society was different in the 1940s, a sixteen year old was older then than she would be now, and I don’t think the book reflected that very well.

There was plenty to enjoy, though. Iris is a great character; she’s too stubborn to take no for an answer and just enough of a teenager to have no idea why doing some of the things she’s doing might be a bad idea, so there’s nothing she won’t do. Her new public school friends are also great fun, a gang of boys who wear the zoot suit and girls who smoke and drink and go dancing in Harlem. I liked the way that they were never depicted as bad people, even though they were absolutely considered the worst kind of kids these days at the time (and heck, probably would be in most modern stories, too). I wished we got more of Iris’s dad, too. Injured at Pearl Harbor and ashamed enough of his Jewishness to hide it, he’s a fascinating mess we don’t get to see much of.

My favorite part of The Girl is Murder was definitely the ending. After the very generic rebellious-teenager story, I was a little afraid it would have a happy ending that tied up all the loose ends neatly, but no, it managed a very noirish ending. Noir is more than just a 1940s setting, it’s a whole aesthetic of despair and futility. That’s hard to pull off in a YA novel, and for the most part, The Girl is Murder didn’t manage it – but the ending was note-perfect.

In a Sentence: More a teenage melodrama than a noir mystery, The Girl is Murder is a fun 1940s story that hints at something better than it ever quite achieves. ( )