At the end of The Hand in the Wall, Stevie'd become famous as a result of solving the crime of the century. By the time The Box in the Woods begins, her fame has started to fade (which Stevie is grateful for). But, her sleuthing prowess catches the eye of Carson Buchwald, the owner and founder of Box Box, who recently purchased Camp Sunny Pines (previously known as Camp Wonder Falls, the home to an unsolved Michael Myers-type slaughter of 4 camp counselors back in the 70s). Carson is making a true-crime podcast/documentary and hopes that Stevie will join him for the summer and look into the case (she can bring friends and he’ll pay her). Faced with an obnoxious summer of working at a grocery’s deli counter, Stevie takes him up on the offer, with Janelle and Nate joining in on the fun. (David is stuck working on the campaign trail of someone *not* his father.)
Like the first three books, this story jumps between the 70s and present day. We get some great interaction between the friends (I particularly love Nate and his grumpy resignation). And the new side characters were also intriguing in this ode to those grizzly camp murder mysteries. It didn’t take me long to be sucked into the mystery and start the hunt for the killer.
That said, this one fell a little flat for me, because unlike the previous book, the killer/reason for the murder kind-of comes out of nowhere. Unlike the previous books, where there were at least some hints so that when the ending was revealed, you can say ‘I knew it!’, this time around, it was a little too much Hercule Poirot for me. To explain: while I love these mysteries — probably because of Mr. Poirot — I’m not as much a fan of how there is information that Poirot knows that is never revealed until the big reveal of the killer. Because we don’t have that information, we have no chance of figuring out the killer outside of it being explained to us. And that’s how this mystery’s killer is revealed: one big info dump as Stevie winds up to out the killer.
Murder on the Orient Express is similar. We have no familiarity with the precipitating incident that leads to the murder, but Poirot knows and explains the meaning behind his questions and the information he’s been collecting. Everyone in the story is familiar with the precipitating incident, but not us, so there’s no way we’d be able to put the clues together to figure out the killer.
Until Stevie’s info dump (which I’m not describing, to keep the mystery alive), we had no real clue. I had a small inkling that something was off, but nothing I would have bet the farm on. And, wow, was it a doozy! (My eyes still bug some when I think about it.)
Because it was this Poirot-esque mystery, I didn’t enjoy it as much as the previous books. The reason behind the murders (and who committed them) was really clever, but there was no way that we could ever get there without the info dump reveal. It’s for that reason that I gave it a 3.5/5.
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