Sometimes, my 11 year old cousin and I read books together so that we can chat about them when we see each other. Earlier this year, I took a whimsical jaunt through magical France when we read Grim Lovelies by Megan Shepherd at her request. Last time I saw her, back in early October, she couldn’t stop talking about a book she was reading in school called The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. After being told multiple times that this book is “SOOO Good” and I “have to read it!” I put a hold on it at my local library. I had been surprised there was a wait on it.
Reading a bit about it while I waited for it to be available, I was pretty surprised that I’d never even heard of this book, let alone never read it. In general, I consider myself a relatively well read person, and to hear about a book that’s assigned in schools and is older than myself , I would have thought I would have at least heard the name before – especially being a Newbery Medal winner! But alas, this book was completely new to me.
Upon cousin’s description of the book, I was getting Knives Out vibes, which I thought was pretty awesome. I couldn’t wait for the book to be available. (And there’s a chance I might be talking to her on Thanksgiving, so I wanted to get it read before then.) When it finally became available, I was excited to dig in.
**Here be spoilers: Ye hath been warned. **
The Westing Game is murder mystery novel for middle grade readers. The book begins with an apartment building where apartments are rented by invitation only to a very specific set of families/people. It is clear right from the get go that something a bit fishy is going on.
From there, the story introduces Sam Westing, the wealthy CEO of Westing Paper Products, who after years out of the public eye, has passed away. He invites all 16 of his heirs to the estate (who all, unsurprisingly, happen to be the new tenants and employees at said apartment building) and, in his will, challenges them all to a game. The objective: To find out who murdered him. The prize: Sam Westing’s 2 million dollar fortune.
Of course, Sam Westing is a master at games and the clues he has dispensed to his heirs, paired off in duos of his choosing, are as vague as can be – nothing more than a few words each on squares of paper towels. As each mismatched duo tries to sort out the mystery, a burglar is on the loose, a bomber is at large, and lots of shins are kicked.
Each unlikely partnership has its comedy and its heart, most teams learning things about the other to break down barriers and create meaningful relationships. Naturally, as with most mysteries, people are not who they seem and unreliability is in abundance.
I particularly enjoyed the back and forth with names changing between who referenced who and characters dark secrets coming to light as they get deeper and deeper into the game. Windkloppel? It was Wexler a few chapters ago. And Wait? Is she Alice or Tabitha Ruth? were fun puzzles to sort out.
Kudos to Raskin for coming up with a compelling riddle to sort through, as well. While the clues are presented to the reader to figure out before all the characters have gathered the information, I still found myself pouring over my extensive notes and trying to solve the mystery before the book. I will pat myself on the shoulder and say I did have part of it figured out earlier on. But as the story continued and the characters also figured out the bits I knew, more twists and turns were added, ultimately culminating it an answer I didn’t see coming. (And part of one that I kicked myself for because I had an inkling and then gave it up.)
I appreciated that, unlike some mysteries (in movies and books alike) this story laid out a lot of the clues early on. There wasn’t some insane “gotcha” twist that you never could have seen coming – though that’s not to say there weren’t some surprises – and there wasn’t a solution that you never could have solved on your own because the some pieces of the puzzle were withheld. To me, that’s kind of a cheap way to go about a mystery and I enjoyed that this one didn’t do that.
Overall, I actually really enjoyed this book, despite being a bit out of it’s target demographic. And while some of the book maybe didn’t age super well – I’ll be honest, I can’t imagine a children’s book today being written with quite so many bombings in it – I think the mystery was well put together and built to last. I think, had a I read this as a younger kid, I would have adored it. I loved figuring out some of the clues right before they became obvious and I loved kicking myself for the ones I missed.
I thought all the characters with their quirks (using unneeded crutches for attention, a wannabe socialite trying to find her place and ending up paired with a grouchy restauranteur) were dynamic feeling and each had some semblance of a development arc, instead of just being thrown in as tokens and forgotten about.
The only bit I think, that I didn’t really love was the ending. The last few chapters served as a bit of an epilogue and wrapped up each of the characters storylines. While I wish this had ended not to long after the “Mr. Eastman has been expecting you” scene, the story went on to fast forward 5 years later, and then again to some undisclosed amount of years (thought seemingly not too many) later where it recapped the characters endings further.
While I wasn’t sure if this is just a middle-grade fiction thing, where all the storylines need to be tied up in a bow or if this was just a product of the times it was written in, I felt the same way about it as I felt about the ending of the Lord of the Rings movies – which is to say, as soon as I thought it was over there was YET ANOTHER ending. (Not to knock the ending of LoTR, but by the end when you have to use the restroom after such a long movie, the endless number of endings feels excessive.)
This is something I’m going to ask my cousin about when I talk to her. I want to know if she liked the endings and if she felt like she needed to know who married who and where they ended up. Because, at least to me, it just felt like unnecessary fluff that brought the book to an even 30 chapters. Though I will say, the last paragraph or so was a fun, full circle kind of ending. (I just didn’t need the three chapters or so leading up to it.)
If I hate to rate this book, out of 5, I think I would give it a solid 4 stars of 5. Or a “!” if we’re talking chess notations, which I think Sam Westing would approve of.
Have you read this book? Let me know what you think!
