I heard of The Westing Game in an indirect reference while reading an essay about the movie Knives Out. I ran across the book on Audible and thought I would give it a try. I went in not knowing anything about the story. I didn’t know it was published back in 1978. I didn’t know it was a Young Adult book let alone that it was a Newberry winner. The beginning of the book caught me off guard. It was quite different from most of the other young adult books I had been reading. It took time and perseverance on my part, but by the end I was a fan. In fact, I think I’m going to read this book again.
I didn’t know it was a murder mystery for several chapters, so my brain was in the wrong gear. I was confused by what seemed to me to be a fragmented beginning. I was also confused by the narrative style. It was third person. Yes, third person is as common as yellow sunflowers, but this was the extreme third person that jumps point of view across sixteen characters. My head was spinning trying to keep up with who was who. It’s not that the book is poorly written. It’s not. It’s just that, as already mentioned, I went in completely unprepared. It says a lot for the author, Ellen Raskin, that in spite of my unprepared cluelessness, I caught up with the book and was all in by the end.
As far as murder mysteries go, this is one with heart. While the plot of the book does orbit the sun (the “murder”) Raskin interests us more in the planets (the 16 characters) doing the orbiting than in the murder itself. I found every one of the characters dislikable at first. I was about to turn my nose up at the book and move on to something else more compatible with my sensibilities. Just in time, though, one of the characters momentarily flashed an empathetic side. I decided to stick around to see what this was about. Then it happened again with another character. The characters don’t suddenly become likable, but little-by-little, they become fully human and worth my attention and care. Raskin shows her skill in the slow unwrapping of this delightful gift set of characters.
The mystery itself is intriguing . . . and fun. Little things happen that tease your curiosity like how the piece of jewelry the young girl drops the night of the murder ends up on the person of the murdered man the next day in his coffin. The man in the coffin is Mr. Westing. He’s quite an enigma. The day after his murder he invites the sixteen of the residents of the nearby apartment complex to his funeral where, in his will, the rules of the Westing Game are laid out. Apparently one of them is the murderer. There is a lot of money at stake for the team that figures out the mystery. I’m lousy at figuring out murder mysteries. Even in books and movies where the detective explains the whole thing, detail by detail, to the suspects who have been gathered in the library, I still don’t get it. I’m pitiful. I think I got it in The Westing Game, but whether I did or not, I loved the book.
This book is not what I consider a hard-core mystery. Perhaps that’s why I like it so much. I love stories. In this book I get the stories of sixteen characters—sixteen characters, who in one way or another, become better people by playing The Westing Game.
These books by Tory Anderson are now available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback format:
