Booklist, May 1, 2011

(starred review) Iris Anderson used to be a private-school girl. She also used to have a mother and a father with two legs. But after her father was injured at Pearl Harbor, her mother became depressed and committed suicide. By the time Pop returns home to start a detective business, the family’s fortunes have fallen, and 15-year-old Iris finds herself living on the Lower East Side and attending P.S. 110 with kids a lot tougher than she is. This is the premise of a smart offering that gives both mysteries and historical fiction a good name. Here the mystery surrounds Tom, a boy at school who disappears. Pop has been hired to solve the case, but Iris can see that doing the required leg work on only one leg can be pretty exhausting. So she takes it upon herself to become her father’s assistant. That gets to her places she shouldn’t be, like the Savoy in Harlem; hanging out with people she shouldn’t; and lying to just about everybody. The mystery is solid, but what makes this such a standout is the cast. Sounding like they’re right out of the 1940s (well, a 40’s movie anyway), the characters, young and old, pop off the pages. Iris, intriguing and infuriating, captures the tension inherent in the teenage years, no matter what the decade. This joint is jumping.

— Ilene Cooper

Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 2011

Take a powder, Nancy Drew. 1940s girl sleuth Iris Anderson is on the case.

Fifteen-year-old Iris knows she would make a great detective, if only her private-eye war vet father would give her a shot. But Pop refuses, especially after the suicide of Iris’ mother less than a year ago. Now they’ve moved to downtown Manhattan, where Iris, once a posh private-school girl, has to rub elbows with the rough characters of P.S. 110. When Pop takes a case that involves the disappearance of one of her new classmates, Iris sees her chance to collect clues on the sly. Drawn into a world of cigarette-smoke–filled Harlem dance halls and shabby tenement apartments, Iris tries to track down what happened to troubled, handsome Tom Barney by using her new friendships with sassy Suze and bookish Pearl to uncover more evidence. But soon she becomes tangled up in her own web of lies, and when Pop comes clean with some shocking information, Iris is forced to admit that detecting isn’t as easy as it looks. As with her popular adult mysteries starring actress-turned-gumshoe Rosie Winter, Haines’ pitch-perfect rendering of postwar New York City is “murder…you know—marvelous.”

A stylish, slang-filled teen noir that is as entertaining as it is absorbing. (Historical fiction. 12 & up)

Bulletin for the Center of Children's Books

Iris Anderson’s father survived Pearl Harbor; he’s missing a leg, but his pride is fully intact. Refusing help from his brother, a private investigator like himself, he tries to revive his pre-war business, but it’s hard to keep a low profile on New York stakeouts with a prosthetic leg. Fifteen-year-old Iris is more than willing to help, and she even manages to snap incriminating photos of a cheating wife for one of Pop’s cases, but he wants to keep her far from his often risky and sordid work. Iris, however, has the inside track on one particular case that involves a boy who has gone missing from her public high school, and without her father’s knowledge she is soon sneaking out to nightclubs, consulting with students from her former private school, and unearthing some increasingly damning evidence against girls she once considered good friends. Iris’ story has considerable crossover appeal, enticing both mystery lovers and historical fiction fans, with a cunningly devised plot and a cast of period-specific characters: World War II enlistees, zoot suiters, pregnant teens swept covertly out of town, and young women scamming soldiers on leave. Pop’s grudging respect for his daughter’s detective skills and an unresolved mystery in the Andersons’ own household hint that this could be a YA series in the making. But if it doesn’t materialize, older teens might want to look into Haines’ Rosie Winter adult mysteries. EB

School Library Journal (starred review!)

*HAINES, Kathryn Miller. The Girl Is Murder. 352p. Roaring Brook. 2011. Tr $16.99. ISBN 978-1-59643-609-1.

Gr 7-10–In this fast-paced, quick-witted historical mystery, 15-year-old Iris Anderson has the weight of the world on her shoulders. Her German-immigrant mother recently committed suicide; her father came home from Pearl Harbor physically and mentally broken; and circumstances forced her to transfer from an exclusive private school to one of the roughest public schools on New York City’s Lower East Side.  Desperate to save her father’s faltering private-eye business, Iris becomes wrapped up in the disappearance of one of her classmates, discovering that the thin line between friends and suspects is dangerously blurry. Haines scores with her first entry into the young adult scene. Though the abundance of relatively obscure 1940s terminology (“oolie droolie,” “frisking the whiskers,” “taken a powder,” “drizzle puss”) makes for a challenging read at times, the compelling characters, superb setting, and myriad twists and turns will keep readers intrigued till the very end. Fans of Judy Blundell’s What I Saw and How I Lied (Scholastic, 2008) and Jillian Larkin’s Vixen (Delacorte, 2010) will especially appreciate this offering.–Kelly McGorray, Glenbard South High School, Glen Ellyn, IL

Buffalo News, July 24, 2011

The Girl Is Murder by Kathryn Miller Haines; Roaring Brook Press, 352 pages ($16.99). Ages 12 and up.

This promising debut novel is set against the colorful backdrop of New York City during World War II and the steep class divide between public and private high school and between Upper and Lower East Side and Harlem. As any young detective should be, 15-year-old Iris Anderson is pretty much left to her own devices. Her mother is dead; her father, a veteran who lost a leg at Pearl Harbor, is struggling to earn a living as a private eye. Iris decides to start her own investigation after a classmate disappears and the quest prompts her to befriend “The Rainbows,” famous for going their own way and getting into trouble, and even to a dance floor in Harlem. While the details about Iris’ mother’s death aren’t as deftly handled as they might be, the author offers an interesting portrait of an adolescent struggling to make her own way and a fascinating trip back in time, to what it was like to be a teen in 1942 down to the last detail, of the slang (“murder,” for one), the music, the movies, the fashion.

—Jean Westmoore

Sacramento Bee, August 1, 2011

The Girl Is Murder

Kathryn Miller Haines

Roaring Brook Press, $16.99, 342 pages, ages 12 and up

Queen of Hearts

Martha Brooks

Farrar Straus Giroux, $17.99, 224 pages, ages 12 and up

Even during wartime, an awful lot of ordinary life gets lived back home. Babies are born, family members get sick, kids complain about homework, teenagers disobey their parents. Ordinary stuff that happens to each generation.

World War II, of course, permeated life like perhaps no other war. Shortages, ration coupons, blackouts and absent family members became part of the daily environment.

Both of these two new young adult chapter books are set during WWII, "The Girl Is Murder" in 1942 New York City and "Queen of Hearts" starting in 1940 in Manitoba, Canada. The era doesn't dominate either book, but it does add a level of intensity, especially to "Girl."

Kathryn Miller Haines in "Girl" essentially has crafted a Nancy Drew tale for modern readers, putting a real teenager – not that preternaturally savvy and lucky girl sleuth – in a mystery situation grounded in reality. No blue roadster or lawyer father here: Iris Anderson goes to a Lower East Side high school, a comedown from the private all-girls school she attended previously.

What precipitated the change: Her Navy officer father's injury at Pearl Harbor and her German-born mother's suicide just three weeks later. Now her dad, wearing a prosthetic leg, is trying to revive a long-ago career as a private detective. Iris wants to help him, be his legs, but he wants her to stay safe and out of trouble.

Of course, in the tradition of Nancy, trouble finds Iris. In short order at her new school, her purse is stolen, her manners are sneered at and she meets two important people: Tom, a boy who intrigues her, and Suze, a tough-talking older girl who gives her clothing advice.

Iris is as maddening as any other 15-year-old: She lies to impress people, she's stubborn and she can be callous. She's soon up to her ears in a mystery involving Tom, who has gone missing and whose parents hire her father to find him.

Slang of the era – both from the upper crust and the Lower East Side – peppers the book, and if young readers don't quite know what "zazz" or "fraughty" or "copacetic" means, they can get the gist of it. Haines doesn't bypass the racism of the era – Italian boys from Iris' school are pantsed by soldiers for wearing zoot suits, for example – and she evokes the "no tomorrow" feeling of the young people out on the town, dancing to swing music.

"The Girl Is Murder" might well have been designed as the first of a series – it reads a little like it in the ending – and that's OK. Iris could be a lot of fun to hang around with during the rest of the war.

Meanwhile, Marie-Claire, the narrator of "Queen of Hearts," doesn't seem to be going anywhere. She and her two siblings, children of a poor Manitoba farm couple, contract tuberculosis and are sent off to a sanatorium. Recovery methods are primitive in these days before antibiotics, and cure is not guaranteed.

Martha Brooks grafts two small stories – Marie-Claire's developing friendships with her roommate, Signy, and a young musician, Jack, at the sanatorium – onto the larger family tragedy of the three siblings and their treatments. (The details of the latter will make any reader happy to be living in a more aware medical era.) The children are heartbreakingly real, and the sanatorium staff is as well-drawn as any supporting cast.

Publishers Weekly, August 8, 2011

Adult mystery author Haines's YA debut is a meticulously crafted slow burn. It is 1942, and 15-year-old Iris Anderson's father has recently returned from Pearl Harbor with a prosthetic leg, after her mother's suicide. When financial difficulties force them to move from New York City's ritzy Upper East Side to the gritty Lower East Side, Iris longs to help her reclusive father with his detective agency to bring in money and escape from the daily struggles at her new public school, but he refuses, trying to protect her from immoral and dangerous clients. When a case involving a missing student at her school surfaces, Iris is determined to solve it, which leads her to spin a web of lies, befriend an observant outsider, ingratiate herself with the Rainbows (a group of fast girls and zoot suiters), and apply the emotional intelligence that she learned from her mother. Haines writes gracefully, immersing readers in Iris's perceptive thoughts, suffering, and transformation. Nuanced relationships and a social climate shadowed by ethnic tension and war result in a compelling reflection on a complex era. Ages 12–up. (July)

http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-59643-609-1

The Girl is Trouble

Teen detective Iris Anderson struggles to solve parallel mysteries while coming to terms with her Jewish identity in World War II–era New York City in this engrossing follow-up to The Girl is Murder (2011).

It’s only been a month since Iris helped her gumshoe dad solve the disappearance of one of her classmates. Now her father is reluctantly allowing her to assist him on cases, but when Iris finds some disturbing crime-scene photos of her deceased mother in his office, she almost regrets her decision. Iris had been told her mother committed suicide. The photos indicate foul play, though, and Iris is determined to find out the truth. Meanwhile, she has also been hired by the Jewish Student Federation at school to uncover who is leaving anti-Semitic notes in members’ lockers. The investigation stirs up Iris’s feelings of guilt over her own Jewish heritage, which she has essentially ignored. Emotionally distraught and personally involved in both cases, Iris is a prime target for bad boy Benny’s romantic overtures. But are his intentions as sweet as they seem? Or is Iris flirting with danger? Haines delves deeper into Iris’ intriguing character in this compelling, self-contained sequel while doing a bang-up job of maintaining the ace period setting.

A solid addition to what is turning into a swell series. (Historical mystery. 12 & up)

Kirkus Reviews