Module 1: The Westing Game, by Ellen Raskin

Summary: On a cloudy day in November, the residents of Sunset Towers gather in a gloomy mansion to hear the will of late, eccentric millionaire Sam Westing. Imagine their surprise when the will turns out to be a challenge, an invitation to solve Westing’s own murder! The heirs are paired off and provided with $10,000 and a couple of cryptic clues, which they must use to find the murderer and inherit Westing’s millions. As we uncover the secrets of Westing’s heirs, we learn that nothing is as it seems, and neither are the players of this mysterious, and possibly deadly, game.

Reference: Raskin, E. (1978). The Westing Game. New York, NY: Dutton Children's Books. 

Impressions: I love mysteries and thrillers, and I enjoyed this book, written for adolescents, as much as I have any book intended for adults. This is one of the few "classics" that I think will really stand the test of time: it's fast-paced, clever, and humorous, and the puzzle at the center of the story will keep kids engaged through to the last page. I especially love the characters of the book, and the sly way that Raskin reminds us, as we're flipping pages to learn whodunnit, how very misleading appearances can be. Each player in the game is revealed to have hidden depths, motives and motivations that belie first impressions. It's also one of the few older books with a diverse cast of characters. 

Review: "A supersharp mystery, more a puzzle than a novel, but endowed with a vivid and extensive cast. In the Christie tradition, Raskin isolates a divers group of strangers—the mysteriously hand-picked tenants of a new apartment building within sight of the old Westing Mansion—and presents them with the information that one of them is the murderer. Actually, it turns out that there is no corpse, but no one is aware of that when they are all assembled for a reading of old Westing’s fiendish will, which pairs them all off and allots each pair four one-word clues to the murderer’s identity. As the winning pair is to inherit Westing’s fortune, there is much secret conferring, private investigating, far-out scheming, and snitching and scrambling of the teasing, enigmatic clues. (For example, those of black judge Josie Jo Ford, which she takes for a racial insult, read SKIES AM SHINING BROTHER.) As a result of the pairings, alliances are made and suspended, and though there is no murderer there is a secret winner—the pigtailed youngest of the “heirs”—plus extravagant happy endings for all. As Westing had warned, all are not what they seem, and you the reader end up liking them better than you expected to. If Raskin’s crazy ingenuity has threatened to run away with her on previous occasions, here the complicated game is always perfectly meshed with character and story. Confoundingly clever, and very funny."

(1978). The Westing Game. Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/ellen-raskin-0/westing-game-raskin/. 

Suggested Use: This book would be a great choice for a summer reading challenge for middle-school-aged kids. It's well-written and clever, but it's also fast-paced and thoroughly entertaining, so kids won't feel like they're wasting their summer vacation reading. Afterwards, kids could be led in a discussion about how the characters are revealed to be much more complex than appearances imply.