The Girl is Murder

Targeted at young adults, The Girl is Murder (2011), a mystery novel by American author Kathryn Miller Haines, tells the story of a 1940s private eye and his teenage daughter Iris who investigate the disappearance of one of Iris' classmates. In 2012, Haines published a sequel titled The Girl is Trouble.

The book is set in New York City in 1942. Iris Anderson is a fifteen-year-old high school student from a Jewish family of some means living on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She attends a private school and receives an ample allowance. Unfortunately, her family is thrust into financial hardship after her mother, a German immigrant, commits suicide after her husband loses his leg during the attack on Pearl Harbor. Now, Iris's father is forced to make a living as a private detective while Iris must attend public school on the Lower East Side. Iris struggles to adjust to public school as she has previously grown up in relative privilege, far away from immigrants and people of color. This makes her rethink her Jewish heritage, which she seeks to hide from others whenever possible.

Meanwhile, noticing her father’s struggle with many of the more physical elements of private detective work, Iris wants more than anything to assist him, but her father refuses, saying it's not the type of work a teenage girl should do. Nevertheless, Iris intervenes when one of her father's clients complains about the detective's inability to capture photographic evidence of his wife's infidelity. Iris takes it upon herself to get the pictures herself, and while the client is satisfied, her father is angry, saying Iris doesn't have the proper training to be a detective.



After one of Iris's classmates, Tom Barney, goes missing, her father reluctantly accepts her assistance in solving the case. Tom was the first person who was nice to Iris on her uncomfortable first day at public school, therefore, Iris feels especially obliged to aid in the investigation of his disappearance. Believing that another student is likely involved with Tom's disappearance, Iris seeks to enmesh herself in the social strata of the school. She is not above lying to or manipulating fellow students into giving her information. One exception is her new friend, Pearl, a heavy-set girl who becomes Iris's closest ally. Iris also meets and falls for an Italian boy, Benny. Iris hears from another student Suze that Benny thinks Iris "is murder." This, Iris learns, is slang for "marvelous." Nevertheless, it is a rather ominous expression in a mystery story about a disappearance.

As she continues to investigate Tom's disappearance, Iris learns more about the missing young man. He was loosely connected to a gang of Italian youths called the Rainbows, though really, they are less a gang and more a horde of unruly teens, smoking and dancing until all hours. They are looked down upon because they wear "zoot suits" made from expensive material that many believe should go to the war effort. Most shockingly, Iris learns that Tom used to be in a relationship with Iris's closest friend from her Upper East Side private school days, Grace. Iris believes she is getting closer to solving the mystery because, at one point, somebody breaks into her house. She cannot see the person's face, but it looks like a teenage girl, possibly Grace with whom Iris has had a dramatic falling out. Later in the novel, Iris's father forces her to break off her relationship with Benny because he is Italian.

In the end, Iris learns the sad truth of Tom's disappearance. He wanted to fight in the war effort, but at sixteen-years-old, he was too young. His primary motivation for wanting to join the army has less to do with patriotism and everything to do with pleasing Grace. Unfortunately, Tom doesn't even get the chance to storm the battlefield in glory. Before he is even shipped off, he is killed in a freak accident during basic training. The abruptness and lack of intrigue surrounding his death serve as a stark reminder to Iris about the cruelty of the world.



With its plucky teenage detective and exploration of class issues, The Girl is Murder is like an episode of Veronica Mars transplanted to 1940s New York.