Book Review | ARC Review | The Night in Question (Agathas #2) by Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson

How do you solve a murder? Follow the lessons of the master—Agatha Christie! Iris and Alice find themselves in the middle of another Castle Cove mystery in the sequel to New York Times bestseller The Agathas, by powerhouse authors Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson.

Alice Ogilvie and Iris Adams became the talk of Castle Cove when they cracked the biggest case of the fall: the death of Brooke Donovan. Together, the Agathas put Brooke’s killer away for good, and since then things around town have been almost back to normal. Quiet, even. 

But if Alice and Iris know anything, it’s that sometimes quiet is just the calm before the storm. The truth is, Brooke’s disappearance wasn’t the first mystery to rock Castle Cove, and it won’t be the last. So when their school dance at the infamous Levy Castle—the site of film starlet Mona Moody’s unsolved death back in the 1940s—is interrupted by a violent assault, Iris and Alice pull out their murder boards and get back to work.

To understand the present, sometimes you need to look into the past. And if the Agathas want a chance at solving their new case, that’s exactly where they’ll need to start digging. Only, what they uncover might very well kill them.

Characters

Current Friend Group

• Alice – Rich, one of the main characters. Previously part of the friend group that Kennedy and Park were in until a falling out with a break up
• Iris – Not rich, other main character. Tied together with Alice from their love of Agatha Christie.
• Neil – Friend group with Iris, good at solving tech stuff
• Spike – Friends with Iris. Maybe more than a friend?
• Cole – possible love interest of Iris’s?

The Old Friend Group

• Kennedy – very rich, victim of stabbing
• Park – very rich, her father is a scary, intimating man; she is being held for the stabbing of Brooke
• Ashley Henderson – Not quite as rich, Alice’s partner in the genealogy project
• Brooke – murdered last year

Other Characters

• Raf – working in the police department part time, friends with Alice and Iris
• Alex – was working as a waiter during the party, his dad owns a hotel that is on land that Kennedy’s dad wants to buy to put in luxury condos
• Mr. Park – Helen Parks dad, very intimidating
• Brooke – Watches over Alice
• Detective Thompson – lead in the police force, seems inept at solving crimes and has something against Alice and Iris
• Lillian Levy – She is the grandmother of Brooke, who died in the first book. Her father owned Levy castle and was married to Mona Moody

My Review

This is the second book in the series (if you didn’t catch that from the title of my post). I think I might have missed out a bit from not reading the first but not enough that the book was hard to follow. I did google for a summary of what happened in the first book, since I don’t think I will go back and read it.

This had a lot of plot for being a Teen/YA book. There were two mysteries that were threaded throughout the story. One taking place in the present day with a teenager that was stabbed at a school dance and the other with a famous actress that had fallen off a balcony to her death from the place the dance was held decades earlier. Alice, a rich, self centered and Iris, smart, not as privileged have their bits of drama weaved into the story and their immaturity in some situations bring a touch of authenticity to the situations.

The Night in Question was an easy read where high schoolers take on the roles of detectives, inspired by the works of Agatha Christie. Set in a small town plagued by puzzling crimes, this book combines youthful ambition, flawed law enforcement, and a deep love for the mystery genre. The ending tied those threads together and made for a great story.