Dark Passages: Sleuths in Their Youth

My newest column in the Los Angeles Times looks at a slew of mysteries designed for young adult audiences, one of which came out a while ago (John Green’s excellent, Edgar award winning PAPER TOWNS), others not out yet (THE MORGUE AND ME by John C. Ford), and two by longstanding veterans – one in YA (Caroline B. Cooney) and the other, crime fiction in general (Robert B. Parker, turning the clock back several decades with a “Young Spenser” novel). And if there was a way for me to put in an advance word for Justine Larbalestier’s upcoming novel LIAR, I would have, but the book’s not out till October, and it seems a bit early for that sort of thing. (Same goes for Nancy Werlin, as I’ve written about her a bunch of times already.) Suffice to say that I want more of the good stuff in YA mystery as it’s a gap in my reading I want to fill in a big way.