By the Time You Read This I’ll Be Gone (Murder, She Wrote #1)

In a gripping series opener, Kuehn (We Weren’t Looking to Be Found) mixes small-town coziness with intriguing dual mysteries. Striving to be as tenacious as her crime novelist great-aunt, Cabot Cove High School student and amateur investigative reporter Bea Fletcher, 15, cracks cold cases and writes about them on crime website TrueMaine. When her best friend, Jackson, is declared missing after failing to accompany Bea to her teen anxiety support group, she persuades calculating twins Leisl and Leif and charming Carlos—students at nearby elite Broadmoor Academy—to find him. Though each of the enigmatic trio is hiding a secret, they agree to help, motivated by their own desire to solve a mystery surrounding the 1980s death of a local teen. But as the group’s members struggle to trust one another, they discover they’re not the only ones in Cabot Cove with something to hide. Fully fleshed out backstories empathetically cover topics of grief, privilege, and suicidal ideation, and Kuehn’s elaborately plotted narrative stays true to the inspiration’s format, culminating in a briskly paced resolution that handily concludes these mysteries while leaving plenty of clues behind to set the stage for the next. Bea is white, Black, and Mexican; Carlos is Latinx-cued; Leisl and Leif are white. Ages 12–up. Agent: Michael Bourret, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (Oct.)