Book Review :: The Hand on the Wall, by Maureen Johnson

The Hand on the Wall by Maureen Johnson
ISBN: 0062338110
Series: Truly Devious #3
Also in this series: Truly Devious, The Vanishing Stair, The Box in the Woods, Nine Liars
Published by Katherine Tegen Books
on 2020-01-21
Genres: Mystery, Young Adult
Pages: 369
Format: eBook
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Ellingham Academy must be cursed. Three people are now dead. One, a victim of either a prank gone wrong or a murder. Another, dead by misadventure. And now, an accident in Burlington has claimed another life. All three in the wrong place at the wrong time. All at the exact moment of Stevie’s greatest triumph . . .

She knows who Truly Devious is. She’s solved it. The greatest case of the century.

At least, she thinks she has. With this latest tragedy, it’s hard to concentrate on the past. Not only has someone died in town, but David disappeared of his own free will and is up to something. Stevie is sure that somehow—somehow—all these things connect. The three deaths in the present. The deaths in the past. The missing Alice Ellingham and the missing David Eastman. Somewhere in this place of riddles and puzzles there must be answers.

Then another accident occurs as a massive storm heads toward Vermont. This is too much for the parents and administrators. Ellingham Academy is evacuated. Obviously, it’s time for Stevie to do something stupid. It’s time to stay on the mountain and face the storm—and a murderer.

Last updated on 2 September 2021

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My thoughts on The Hand on the Wall

Once again Johnson is back at it with superb story telling, brilliant characters, captivating plot lines and stunning settings. The Hand on the Wall is the third (and final?*) book in the Truly Devious series. If you haven’t read the first two, Truly Devious and The Vanishing Stair, then I highly recommend them! There won’t be spoilers in this review, so you’re safe to keep reading!

In The Hand on the Wall we continue following Stevie in modern day, up at Ellingham Academy, in the mountains of Vermont. When a huge storm is forecast to hit the mountain, all the students at Ellingham are sent home … but Stevie and the rest of the residents of Miranda House hide and remain behind so they can continue figuring out the mystery of the murders in the previous books, and also stop Edward King from becoming President. Sounds like a lot, but there are aren’t too many story lines happening at the same time, so it’s not hard to follow.

“The wonderful thing about reality is that it is highly flexible. One minute, all is doom; the next, everything is abloom with possibility.”

Once again, the mystery surrounding the Ellingham kidnappings introduced in Truly Devious are front and centre of this book, but Stevie has a lot more of the pieces put together. She’s also well on the way to figuring out who killed the students at school in the present. By the end of the book she gathers those still at school and reveals the killer, in a very Hercule Poirot kind of way (which is glorious!). While I had already guessed who it was who killed the students, the reveal was still wonderfully done and I applaud Johnson for the details and the clever thought which went into the story.

“Anxiety does not ask your permission. Anxiety does not come when expected. It’s very rude. It barges in at the strangest moments, stopping all activity, focusing everything on itself It sucks the air our of your lungs and scrambles the world.”

Overall, a superb ending* to a brilliant series. If you haven’t read the Truly Devious series yet, and you enjoyed mystery, cold cases, boarding schools, Young Adult stories, and excellent characters, then you have to pick up these books. I’m thinking I need to re-read them, that’s how much I enjoyed them.

Have you read this series? Did you figure out who the killers were?

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*After looking on Goodreads for the book information, I discovered that there is a listing for a Truly Devious 4! Coming out in 2021, The Box in the Woods is apparently a stand-alone story that follows Stevie Bell on an outside-Ellingham mystery at Sunny Pines Camp. It has some of the same characters in it, and I can’t wait to read it!