THE STARLET LETTER

Mathison’s delightful YA period mystery features identical twin detectives.

Seventeen-year-old identical-twin sisters Vivian and Viola Van der Beeck are delighted and intrigued when Follies starlet Babs Le Roy decides to rent a room in their New York City house. It’s 1931, and the formerly aristocratic Van der Beeck are down on their luck after the 1929 stock market crash, an event which compels the twins’ parents to take in a colorful group of lodgers. The two girls are quite different: Vivian is relentlessly logical while Viola is intuitive and literary, but their minds work in concert in an almost preternatural way, a fact that sometimes confounds their parents and drives their dreary and rather hapless governess, Mistress DuBois, to distraction. The girls must use all of their powers of observation and intuition when Babs suddenly disappears from the chorus line of the Ziegfield Follies and they are questioned by the police about the missing starlet’s whereabouts. Vivian searches for clues in the traditional manner of detectives, but Viola is struck by the parallels between the facts surrounding Babs’ disappearance and the plot of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Also in play is the matter of the Van der Beeck family curse, a multi-generational tendency toward eccentricity and sudden disappearances that, Viola is certain, has some bearing on the current situation; “Oh, not that old rot,” says practical-minded Vivian. “People make their own rotten luck.” Will the combined efforts of these identical (but very different) twins be sufficient to solve the mystery? This story is accessible and nicely set in Depression-era New York City. The novel is enjoyably paced and the relationships between the characters, especially the precocious twin detectives Viola and Vivian, are lively and authentic. The details of the setting are well researched, and readers will enjoy the author’s ability to capture the rapid evolution of the entertainment business in 1930s New York City. For those who enjoy parallels between classic and contemporary fiction, the references to The Scarlet Letterwill be especially welcome.

Full of engaging characters, the mystery will sweep readers along toward its dramatic, high-wire conclusion.