Settings in Middle-Grade Mysteries

Our Tuesday “Case Files from our Detectives” feature is currently spotlighting Crime Scenes, a.k.a. Settings. What goes into choosing and researching settings? How can mysteries grow out of their settings? How do we bring places or time periods to life on the page, finding the right details? Two weeks ago Diana Renn described how a novel was born from an unexpected challenge she faced while traveling in Japan. PRETTY CROOKED author Elisa Ludwig showed howshe created the setting for her mystery entirely from research. Today, Kristen Kittscher explores settings in middle-grade mysteries.

Here’s a riddle for you. What do Shawn Thomas Odyssey’s THE WIZARD OF DARK STREET, Trenton Lee Stewart’s MYSTERIOUS BENEDICT SOCIETY, Elise Broach’s MASTERPIECE, Rebecca Stead’s WHEN YOUR REACH ME, Matthew Kirby’s ICEFALL and Nancy Springer’s Enola Holmes mysteries all have in common?

The books are disparate enough that it might be hard to notice any shared traits — other than that they are all, to one extent or another — middle-grade mysteries that were published within the last five years. If you look again, though, you’ll realize that not one of these books is set in a realistic contemporary setting. Broach’s MASTERPIECE, while set in modern day New York, involves talking insects. Stead takes us back to 1970s Manhattan, Springer plants us in Victorian England, and Odyssey creates a magical world. ICEFALL recreates a fantastical ancient Norway and Trenton Lee Stewart creates the fictional Stonetown Harbor and Nomansen Island as the backdrop for his intrepid gang’s adventures. 

In fact, I’d go out on a limb and that it’s much more common for middle-grade mysteries to be set in unusual, fantastic, or historical settings than in modern towns. YA mysteries, on the other hand, seem much more rooted in contemporary settings. Why is that?

Part of it may be simply that middle-graders have much greater thirst for adventure and fantastical, over-the-top worlds. However, as someone who set my own mystery in a slightly off-kilter, surreal version of a contemporary suburb, I have an inkling there’s more to it: one of the greatest challenges of writing middle-grade mysteries is keeping stakes high while still creating conditions in which the kids solve the crime on their own. The moment things get too dangerous is the same moment our readers could say, “Hey, why isn’t the FBI all over this?” There are ways around this in contemporary mysteries, of course, but many of them involve peopling a story with bumbling law enforcement and clueless or absent parents.

Skewing reality a bit or setting the story in the past lifts that obstacle and helps readers suspend disbelief that much more easily. Sure, in real life it might be wiser to call your parents on your cell rather than foil an evil man set on destroying the world, but on surreal Nomansan Island in Stewart’s MYSTERIOUS BENEDICT SOCIETY, that’s not an option. Similarly, life in the 1970s Upper West Side of Manhattan (WHEN YOU REACH ME) affords kids much more investigative freedom than life in Manhattan would today. (Although: Kirsten Miller wisely gets around this in KIKI STRIKE: INSIDE THE SHADOW CITY by setting Ananka Fishbein’s story in the literal underworld of New York, amidst rat-filled tunnels where it feels like anything can happen.)

What do you think? Have I cherry-picked my examples, or are middle-grade mysteries indeed more often set in fantastical or historical worlds? And, if so, do you think it has anything to do with helping along our willing suspension of disbelief?

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Kristen Kittscher’s debut middle grade mystery THE WIG IN THE WINDOW (Harper Children’s) will be released in  2013. It follows the comic misadventures of two tween sleuths who suspect their school counselor is a dangerous fugitive — and just might be right! A former middle school English teacher, Kristen lives in Pasadena, California with her husband, Kai. When she’s not writing, you’ll find her running her after-school tutoring business or taking orders from her hopelessly spoiled pets.

Undercover #5

Time to check in and see what our detectives have been reading lately!

Diana Renn:  I'm re-reading THE CHRISTOPHER KILLER by Alane Ferguson. Warning: it's not for the faint of heart, or for the very young reader. The teen sleuth, Cameryn, is the daughter of the county coroner in a small town in Colorado, and she aspires to become a forensic pathologist. She's up close and personal with dead bodies and autopsies, and you'll learn more than you might have wanted to about this science. But wow, wow, wow, what a mystery. I really couldn't figure out who did it until the end. Expert use of red herrings, suspects, and reveals, in unpredictable ways. Here's what I really love: Ferguson takes a dark premise (a girl trying to track down a serial killer, who has just killed someone she knows) and shines the light into it. There is opportunity for spiritual reflection and growth, for dealing with the reality of loss, and even -- incredibly -- humor. I'm reading it again to figure out how she pulled off this incredible high-wire act.

W.H. Beck: I just finished ICEFALL by Matthew Kirby over Thanksgiving. I actually read it all in one gulp--it was that good. Set in the north in the time of beserkers and Vikings, overlooked second daughter Solveig and her siblings are sent to live in a distant fortress on a fjord when their father, the king, goes to war. Once the fjord freezes, they will be safe from any invaders. Only it slowly becomes clear that, even though they are with their father's most trusted servants and guards, there is a traitor among them--and now that the fjord is frozen, they are all trapped. Will they survive? Who is the saboteur? Is their father winning or losing his war? As Solveig grapples with these questions, she also learns the power of Story from her father's skald and starts to figure out what her own power might be. A locked-room mystery with characters to cry over, an unusual setting, and important themes. Loved it.

Kristen Kittscher: I'm finally reading the 2009 mystery THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE, 70-year old Alan Bradley's brilliant debut, which has me hoping he'll be writing well into his 90s. I'm a sucker for precocious young protagonists, and -- while this is not a YA title -- it features one of the most entertaining young geniuses you'll ever encounter: eleven year old Flavia De Luce, a budding chemist whose wry, deadpan observations about her world light up this funny, clever cozy-esque mystery set in 1950s England. Though not a fast-paced book, it's a tale that bookish teens are just as likely to enjoy as adults. 

Elisa Ludwig: I'm reading NOTHING by Janne Teller. Talk about dark! This book is extremely creepy and bone-chilling, but brilliant in its simplicity.