Based on an actual crime in 1955, this YA novel is at once a mystery and a coming-of-age story. The brutal murder of two teenage girls on the last day of Nora Cunningham′s junior year in high school throws Nora into turmoil. Her certainties—friendships, religion, her prudence, her resolve to find a boyfriend taller than she is—are shaken or cast off altogether. Most people in Elmgrove, Maryland, share the comforting conviction that Buddy Novak, who had every reason to want his ex-girlfriend dead, is responsible for the killings. Nora agrees at first, then begins to doubt Buddy′s guilt, and finally comes to believe him innocent—the lone dissenting voice in Elmgrove. Told from several different perspectives, including that of the murderer, Mister Death′s Blue-Eyed Girls is a suspenseful page-turner with a powerful human drama at its core.
Review
"An engrossing exploration of how a murder affects a community."--Kirkus, starred review
"This is a thinking-teen's mystery."--Bulletin
"Hahn emphasizes the universality of growing up and facing death."--Horn Book
"This wrenching novel offers an aggregate portrait of the effects of loss and grief, including both the strengthening and dissolution of relationships."--Publishers Weekly, starred review
"This creepy tale slowly and craftily builds tension . . . It has the added feature of offering a unique snapshot of life in the 1950's."--School Library Journal
"The veracity of this tragedy raises the stakes for readers who are already fans of Hahn's supernatural fiction, and the coming-of-age component of Nora's shattered naïveté is all the more searing."--Bulletin
From the Author
This is the most difficult book I've ever written, mainly because it is based loosely on my own experiences as a teenager. Writing it brought back memories as intense as the day they happened. When I sat down at the computer, I traveled straight back into the past. I remembered the words of songs I'd never really forgotten, poetry and books and movies, the clothes we wore, the things we talked about -- and thought about, my feelings of inadequacy and insecurity, my increasing religious doubts, my uneasy relationship with my mother, and so on. Since it is unlike my other books, I challenged myself '' to experiment by using the present tense and employing multiple points of view-- very liberating. When I finally finished the book, I was very nervous about its reception. Would kids read it thinking it was a typical middle school ghost story? Would some be offended by Nora's leaving the Church? Or by her curiosity about sex? Or the smoking and drinking? Would people who remembered the murders be upset by my factionalized treatment of the events set in motion that June morning in 1955?'' Well, I told myself, we write the stories we have to write. And this is the best book I've ever written. At least I think so.