The Night in Question by Glasgow and Lawson

THE NIGHT IN QUESTION by Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson (The Agathas) is the second in a mystery series involving two teenage friends, Alice Ogilvie and Iris Adams, who frequently channel Agatha Christie and her characters like Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot. In this (overly?) complicated case, Glascow and Lawson have Alice and Iris “trying to solve two mysteries seventy-four years apart.” One of their classmates, Rebecca Kennedy, is viciously attacked at a Sadie Hawkins dance at Levy Castle and as they try to prove that another student, Helen Park, is innocent, the would-be detectives learn about the possibility of earlier murders at the same location. Did famous movie stars Mona Moody and Clifford Hayes really die accidentally? Can Alice and Iris (without too much trouble from parents and the authorities) “draw a line from Mona Moody to what happened to Rebecca Kennedy”? There are plenty of clues (and red herrings) in the short, alternately narrated chapters which are “so Agatha Christie: a secret passage, a hidden staircase, sneaking around in the dark with a storm raging outside.”