7 More Murder Mystery Books for Teens

John “Smoke” Conlan is serving a prison sentence for murdering his English teacher and a student witness. John knows he did something, but he’s sure he did not kill his English teacher. Fortunately, he has an unusual ability: ever since he nearly died from a brutal beating by his father, he has been able to detach from his physical body, which proves helpful because it means he can leave the prison grounds.

Smoke uses this ability to carry out favors for fellow inmates (and a few of the guards). On one of his excursions, Smoke meets Pink, a tough young woman he remembers from high school. Through a series of events, they come to realize there’s more to the story of what happened the night Smoke’s English teacher was killed, and they begin investigating, leading themselves further and further into danger.

The story is compelling enough on its own, but we were extra intrigued reading the author’s note, in which she explains that her father was a prison warden, and her experiences visiting her father at work and listening to his stories inspired the novel. This helps to explain the realistic feel of the setting and the inclusion of a kind and thoughtful warden who sees good in Smoke and hopes to rehabilitate him.

(Side note: Cosimano’s Finley Donovan series, about a mystery-writer-turned-accidental-hitwoman, is a lot of fun if you need your own, grownup, First Chapter Friday recommendation!)

We’ve been wanting to recommend this one since we started making First Chapter Friday recommendations and just haven’t found the right list to include it on, so we’re excited the time has finally come!

June is a prodigy: she got a rare perfect score on the Trial, the Republic’s placement test that determines how useful citizens will be to the military (score high, and you’re headed to high school, college, and an officer position; score low, and you’re headed to a labor camp). As a result, she’s expected to quickly rise through the military ranks. Day is the Republic’s most-wanted criminal: his wanted posters appear frequently on the Jumbotrons that cover the city, but so far, no one actually knows what he looks like.

Alternating between these two characters’ points of view, we go along for the ride as June’s older brother Metias is murdered and Day is blamed for the murder. As June investigates and Day tries to stay out of the Republic’s hands, they begin to realize that there’s more going on in the Republic than meets the eye, and it seems to involve the deadly plague running rampant through its streets.

We loved Lu’s entire trilogy (though a fourth book came out since we read it), and (fangirl alert!) got a signed copy when she came to an assembly at our school. Whether your students are fans of dystopian novels, teen romances, false accusation stories, or just riveting reads, they can’t go wrong with Legend.

Based on the real-life Semester at Sea program, Urban’s novel takes us on a cruise around the world with Jade, who is determined to escape the hurt she’s feeling after being dumped by her boyfriend, Silas, for her best friend, Layla. Too bad she shows up to board the cruise only to spot them both in line.

Jade tries not to let the run-in with Silas and Layla ruin her Campus on Board experience, settling into life on board, making new friends, attending classes, and exploring London and Lisbon when the ship is in port.

But when Silas discovers Layla’s empty room covered in blood, everyone assumes Layla has been thrown overboard, and Jade quickly becomes the top suspect. She and her new crush, Felix, have 18 hours to discover what happened to Layla before the ship returns to port and investigators come on board, but as soon as they begin investigating, several of their new friends turn up dead as well.

Students will likely enjoy following Jade on her race to discover Layla’s real killer as well as the vicarious college-at-sea experience. A couple of the twists and turns even caught us by surprise!

Brynn is returning to St. Ambrose School for her senior year of high school, four years after she left the school in the wake of her favorite teacher’s murder. Brynn isn’t looking forward to it; after all, her best friend Tripp humiliated her just before her teacher was murdered.

Brynn doesn’t have a choice about the move, but she lands her dream internship at a true-crime podcast, and when she pitches Mr. Larkin’s unsolved murder to them, they’re interested. Especially since Mr. Larkin was found by three St. Ambrose students—Tripp, Shane, and Charlotte—who were never seriously investigated for the crime, even though Shane was found standing next to the body holding a bloody rock in his hand.

As Brynn investigates, she discovers there are a lot of secrets in her school community, and her former friend Tripp seems to be involved in quite a few of them.

As a nice touch, there are also references to “what happened in Bayview,” referring to McManus’s One of Us Is Lying series. McManus is prolific when it comes to murder mystery books for teens, and this is one of her better ones.

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Lauded as the savior of generations of young men, Urban Promise Prep uses strict discipline to keep its students in line: the young men must follow a painted line in the hallways, find themselves in detention for infractions like not wearing the right tie with their uniforms, and face angry lectures from Principal Moore if they allow even a toe to slip out of line.

When Principal Moore turns up dead, shot in his office, J.B., Ramon, and Trey, who were in detention in the next room, find themselves at the center of the investigation: Trey was on a bathroom break, Ramon’s hairbrush was found next to the body, and J.B. was covered in blood. All three, however, insist that it wasn’t them.

As J.B., Ramon, and Trey work to discover the truth of what happened to Principal Moore and clear their names, we piece together our own understanding of events from the collection of perspectives, emails, text messages, and newspaper articles shared by characters big and small. The alternating perspectives create a rich portrait of a troubled school and raise important questions about race, violence, poverty, and education in America. 

One review commented that the kids and the way they talked just felt so real, and we couldn’t agree more. We think your students will find the characters relatable and likable: it’s hard not to root for each one of them, even as we wonder who is ultimately responsible for Principal Moore’s murder.
Brooks is a former teacher and an award-winning graduate of USC’s TV and Film Production program, and the rights to the book have already been picked up by Netflix, so this ticks all the right boxes!

This beautiful novel in verse introduces us to Amal Shahid, a Black Muslim teenager wrongfully imprisoned for beating a white classmate so severely he wound up in a coma. Shahid didn’t commit the crime, but this doesn’t matter to the policemen, judge, jury, or community members who see him only as a criminal.

Before his imprisonment, Amal was an artist and poet, but to his teachers and classmates, he was just another unmotivated and disruptive young Black man. As he copes with the despair, hopelessness, and injustice of his situation, he finds power in his words and art.

Adding an extra layer of resonance to the novel is that it was co-written by Yusef Salaam, one of the Exonerated Five wrongfully imprisoned for the rape and assault of a woman in Central Park in 1989. Salaam’s conviction was not vacated until 2002, and his experiences inspire the novel, which also includes poems that he wrote while in prison himself.

The novel is beautiful and so important as we continue to identify and address the systemic racism that has plagued our country since its inception.

Tracy Beaumont’s father has 267 days left to live. He’s a prisoner on death row, sentenced to death for a crime he didn’t commit, and Tracy writes weekly letters to Innocence X (based on the Innocence Project and the Equal Justice Initiative), begging them to take on her father’s case.

When a classmate is found dead and her brother becomes the prime suspect, Tracy is confident her brother wouldn’t have killed anyone. She also suspects the victim was in danger for other reasons since she had approached Tracy the day before about some kind of exposé she wanted to publish in the school paper. Since the local sheriff is the father of the victim’s boyfriend, Tracy is sure the investigation will be biased against her brother, so she begins her own parallel investigation.

As she investigates, however, Tracy realizes the murder her brother is accused of is directly tied to the murder her father has been sentenced to death for, and both crimes are rooted in the town’s ugly racist history.
Johnson’s mystery is compelling, but more importantly, it explores issues of race as it relates to community relationships, the justice system, and the Black community’s relationship with local police forces. Johnson specifically cites Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, as an inspiration, and the connection is easy to see.