Social Suicide

February 15, 2012
In a follow-up to Deadly Cool (2011), Hartley Featherstone returns to romp through another murder mystery. Hartley has joined the Herbert Hoover High online-newspaper staff, working for her intriguing, black-clad friend, Chase, the editor. She's set to interview Sydney, caught cheating on strict Mr. Tipkins' math test. Hartley arrives for the interview only to find Sydney face down in her pool, electrocuted by her laptop, an apparent victim of "Twittercide." Hartley again meets the annoying Detective Raley, who can't really do his job because Hartley won't tell him what she knows. Raley thinks Sydney committed suicide, but Hartley convinces herself that it had to be murder and sets out to catch the culprit. Again, she puts herself in danger, sneaking off at night to dark parks and breaking into her school, trying to investigate how the test answers might have been stolen. She winds up at the homecoming dance with Chase, a welcome development, but her investigation may have worried the murderer, who now targets Hartley. Will she survive? And what's Detective Raley doing with Hartley's mom? Halliday again balances the comedy and suspense notes well, keeping her characters intriguing and her narrative bright. Hartley has enough smarts combined with obvious foibles to make her a likable heroine. Meanwhile, the mystery bubbles along. Suspenseful fun. (Mystery. 12 & up)

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May 1, 2012

Gr 8 Up-After surviving the events in Deadly Cool (HarperCollins, 2011), Hartley is working as a reporter for the school's newspaper. Her first big assignment is to write about Sydney Sanders, a Homecoming Queen contestant who was caught cheating in precalculus class. Hartley knows that she needs to get to the heart of the story, so she tries convincing Sydney to tell how she got the answers to the test. However, when Hartley goes to meet the ditzy girl, she discovers Sydney's body floating in her pool along with her laptop. The police are positive that her death is a suicide (or, since she was on Twitter right before she died, "Twittercide"), but Hartley is convinced that Sydney wouldn't have agreed to talk to her before killing herself. Now it's up to the protagonist, her friend Sam, and love-interest Chase to solve the murder before Hartley becomes the next target. Plenty of clues are left to keep readers guessing as the teens work together to uncover motives and opportunities for each of their suspects.-Natalie Struecker, Rock Island Public Library, IL

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