The Name of the Game Was Murder

by Joan Lowery Nixon

Overview

Novelist Augustus Trevor has written a manuscript that reveals the darkest secrets of his guests. Whoever can solve Trevor's clues can have his story removed from the book. But when Trevor is bludgeoned to death, the survivors (along with the reader) are challenged to find both the manuscript and the murderer.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780440219163
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	11/28/1994
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	4.19(w) x 6.81(h) x 0.56(d)
Lexile:	820L (what's this?)
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

Joan Lowery Nixon was the author of more than 130 books for young readers and was the only four-time winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Best Young Adult Mystery Award. She received the award for The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore, The Séance, The Name of the Game Was Murder, and The Other Side of the Dark, which also won the California Young Reader Medal. Her historical fiction included the award-winning series The Orphan Train Adventures, Orphan Train Children, and Colonial Williamsburg: Young Americans.

Editorial Reviews

A would-be writer, teenage Samantha is attending a house party at the island mansion of her uncle, Augustus Trevor. A famous author, Trevor has written a book revealing some deep, dark secret from the past of each of his now famous houseguests. The guest who finds the hidden manuscript--using clues provided by Trevor--will have his or her "secret" removed. Everyone, except Samantha, has something to hide, even Sam's Aunt Thea, Trevor's wife. But Trevor can't control his own game, and someone bludgeons him to death in an effort to find the damning manuscript. Trapped on the island by a storm and without phone contact to the mainland, Samantha and the others grudgingly work together to find the manuscript and uncover the killer. The derivative plot is helped along by the quick pacing and melodramatic setting, and the stock players (the movie star, the senator, the fashion designer) perform their roles as expected. While the ending is startlingly abrupt and somewhat anticlimactic, the mystery will still be popular with genre fans.

Janice Del Negro