Truly Devious

“It wasn’t every day you moved away from home to go to boarding school, after all.”

Over 80 years after the murders and kidnappings at Ellingham Academy, 16-year-old Stevie Bell is on her way to attend the infamous school. Despite the school’s dark past, Stevie is eager to venture into the unknown world of Ellingham, and the special occasion has caused her to try to make peace with her parents, with whom she doesn’t get along. Ellingham’s label as a “boarding school” reminds the reader that Stevie will be living away from home, isolated in the mountains of Vermont, and thrust into the mysteries of the school.

“Stevie Bell had a simple desire: she wanted to be standing over a dead body [...]. She wanted to be the person who found out why the body was dead.”

Stevie is a crime aficionado, and her interests lean toward the macabre. However, Stevie is quick to point out that she doesn’t want to hurt people: Instead, she wants to be the one who catches the killer and brings them to justice. Stevie has much to learn about empathizing with crime victims, but her intentions are pure.

“For one of the first times in his life, Albert Ellingham sounded desperate.”

On the night of the 1936 kidnappings, Albert Ellingham’s world changes forever. Before the reader’s eyes, the jolly, gregarious Ellingham loses all of his joy and dissolves into panic. His wife and child—the two people he loves most in the world—are in mortal danger, and although Ellingham is a powerful man, the situation is out of his control. The king’s kingdom is under attack, and he would do anything to restore order and peace.

“If something says Keep Out, that means Keep Out. It doesn’t mean go in because someone dared you or because you heard about other people going in.”

Security Larry, the head of security for Ellingham Academy, issues this prophetic warning on Stevie’s first day on campus. Ellingham may have been built with trapdoors and secret passages, but while these additions to the architecture make for adventurous gameplay, they have become a liability nightmare. This moment foreshadows the events leading Stevie and her classmates into the tunnel.

“This is a real no-one-can-hear-you-scream kind of place.”

Ellie’s comment here, though tongue-and-cheek, hints at a dark reality: Ellingham Academy is so isolated from the outside world that it is dangerous. With no access to cars, reliable Wi-Fi, or cell signal, Ellingham rests on the edge of disaster with any medical emergency, and this detail alludes to a popular horror movie trope. No one will be there to help if a murderer strikes again.

“The critical scene of the mystery is when the detective enters [...]. The detective had arrived at Ellingham Academy.”

Stevie finds comfort in her favorite detective stories and tries to step into the role of the all-knowing detective who cracks the case, brings justice, and implements order. Meanwhile, Stevie wrestles with her anxiety and self-doubt, often asking herself if she belongs at Ellingham. Here, she gives herself a pep talk and reminds herself that she can solve this crime once and for all.

“I think the answer is here. I think someone who was in the house that day was responsible.”

When Stevie arrives at Ellingham Academy, she has already spent years studying the Ellingham case. She has read every case file, and even though almost 100 years have passed without a break in the case, Stevie believes wholeheartedly that she, a 16-year-old girl, can get to the bottom of what happened. Her gumption impresses those around her and earns respect from those who know Ellingham Academy well, like Dr. Charles.

“Edward King was famously disgusting—rich, corrupt, vain. He was the root of a lot of the trouble in Stevie’s life.”

Stevie’s parents work for a politician named Edward King, and Stevie staunchly opposes everything he stands for. Stevie has gone out of her way to sabotage Edward King’s campaign, and he is the person she hates most in the world. She blames him for the wedge between her and her parents, and by setting Edward King up as Stevie’s archnemesis, Johnson heightens the drama of the final scene when David reveals that Edward King is his father.

“She was the often-forgotten victim because she was not rich [...] She was just a smart girl trying to make something of herself at Ellingham Academy.”

Dottie Epstein is one of the tragic figures of the Ellingham affair, and she was likely the first victim on the night of the kidnapping. The opening chapter leads the reader to believe that Dottie was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, but Stevie begins to wonder if Dottie had a personal connection to the murderers or the crime itself. As Stevie points out, Dottie wasn’t rich, and her low status caused her to fade into memory as the country focused only on finding Iris and Alice Ellingham.

“Games are not fun when you don’t know you’re playing.”

The Ellingham culture welcomes games, but games can take many forms: whimsical and fun or sinister and malicious. When the second Truly Devious letter appears on Stevie’s wall and Janelle’s ID goes missing, Stevie wonders if someone is playing a game. Whoever is behind these acts seems to derive pleasure from other people’s fear.

“Some people want to go see the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben. Some people dream of their proms or their someday weddings [...]. Everyone has a dream place, and Stevie Bell was climbing into hers.”

Johnson includes this passage to emphasize the near-spiritual experience Stevie has while wandering through the famous Ellingham tunnel and ascending the stairs to the observatory. This place, though beautiful and shrouded in a tragic history, holds a special meaning for Stevie. She has spent years of her life dreaming about this place, and being there is almost too much for her to take in. The tunnel has seen terrible things, and as the reader learns, more terrible things are in store.

“What had [Gretchen] and Hayes been talking about earlier? What did Hayes owe Gretchen? And did being associated with Hayes cause this kind of turmoil?”

Stevie doesn’t have any warm feelings for Hayes. She finds his work mediocre, and she knows he has a habit of letting others do the work for him, but after she hears Hayes and Gretchen arguing, Stevie starts to worry about her proximity to Hayes. She begins to see that Hayes attracts drama, and she might need to tread carefully around him.

“But she had seen all she needed to. You know death when you see it.”

Stevie has always wanted to see a dead body, but when she finally sees one up close, she is shocked and horrified. After all, this dead body was someone her own age who lived in the same house as her. Death is often treated like a faraway entity, but when it happens to people close to us, the experience is jarring.

“Here she was, watching a case up close, giving a statement, experiencing all the things she so longed to experience. All it took was for someone to die.”

Although Stevie has daydreamed about working with police and forensics teams, her first experience with a crime scene doesn’t come as she would have hoped. She tries to stick to what she knows about an effective investigation but has difficulty remaining clinical and detached. For the first time, Stevie understands that for her future career to exist, people will have to die.

“The dry ice was in the workshop. Janelle’s pass was taken. Janelle’s pass opened the workshop.”

Bit by bit, the pieces of Hayes’s death begin to assemble themselves. The working theory is that Hayes stole Janelle’s pass to take the dry ice, but this might lead the reader to wonder. Why would Hayes take Janelle’s pass when he has his own, and why would he wait until the middle of the night to go into the workshop? An air of mystery hovers over Hayes’s death like the fumes of the dissolved dry ice.

“I opened too many doors and saw too many terrible things [...]. And some of those things never leave you.”

Security Larry serves as a mentor to Stevie. Larry admits that he was once a detective, and although he doesn’t actively discourage Stevie from pursuing this career, he tries to be brutally honest with her about the harsh realities of the job. Being a detective isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be, and only those who are serious about looking evil in the face should consider it.

“Who was David, the David with no social media? The guy who kept telling weird lies about his family.”

From the moment they meet, Stevie is perplexed by David Eastman. She finds him annoying, and although she is attracted to him, she can’t help but feel like something about David is off. The mystery of who David Eastman really is soon takes precedence over solving the Ellingham murders, and it is second only to finding out how Hayes Major died.

“A girl from Pittsburgh came to Ellingham Academy and she wanted to see a dead body [...]. That girl had a taste of something she didn’t know that she wanted or needed, and she had messed it all up.”

When Stevie arrives at Ellingham, she hasn’t had any experience with dating or boyfriends. She didn’t think she wanted to get wrapped up in a relationship: After all, crime is her first love. But when David enters the scene, Stevie wonders if she might have found someone more like her than she is willing to admit.

“What if Hayes hadn’t written The End of It All? What did that mean?”

Stevie begins to wonder if Hayes actually wrote the show that gained him internet fame. Hayes supposedly wrote a zombie story, but when Stevie mentions the Monroeville Mall (a famous location in the zombie film Dawn of the Dead), Stevie becomes suspicious. She wonders if this might be a classic case of revenge and someone wanting credit for their work.

“Are you saying [...] someone murdered Hayes?”

Up until this point, Johnson avoids using the word “murder” to describe what happened to Hayes Major. His death is simply referred to as an accident, but when Stevie tells David her theory about the truth of Hayes’s show, David scoffs at the implication. Still, Stevie has learned enough about Hayes to know that there are several people who might want to get back at him.

“So we could be dancing with a murderer?”

On their way to the dance in Chapter 27, Stevie shares her theories with Nate. Unlike David, Nate takes Stevie’s theory seriously, and he realizes that one of their classmates may have killed Hayes. The idea of “dancing with a murderer” is dramatic and lends itself to the smoky, glamorous world of the 1930s at Ellingham Academy and the murder mystery genre as a whole.

“Maybe you killed him by accident. And then maybe you had to cover your tracks afterward. Make sure there was nothing on his computer identifying you as the true author.”

In Ellie’s bedroom, Stevie believes that she has finally come face-to-face with Hayes’s murderer. She connects the dots of the crime, pointing out the motive, the method, and the moment Ellie messed up and allowed the trail to lead back to her. Ellie doesn’t confess to murder, but she definitely helped Hayes write his show, and she definitely had something to do with his death, accidental or not.

“Things here were not clean. They were not clear. Just like Vorachek even admitted to the crime. But there was no way it was Vorachek.”

Stevie draws a parallel between the situation with Ellie and the convicted suspect in the original Ellingham case. Just like Vorachek, Ellie certainly looks guilty, but something isn’t adding up. Ellie isn’t a malicious person, just like Vorachek’s English was too limited to have written the Truly Devious letter alone. Ellie may have been guilty of something, but there is a missing piece to the puzzle.