The best young adult thrillers with fearless brilliant teen sleuths

I love mysteries with a sensitive protagonist who sees what no one else sees and cares enough to get at the truth when everyone else has dismissed it. Penelope Marin is dealing with grief by collecting trinkets. When she recognizes a trinket in a market stall that had belonged to a murdered young woman, she becomes obsessed with finding out the truth of what happened to her, even though it means putting herself into dangerous situations. Penelope (“Lo”) is brave and determined and doesn’t let anyone else’s disbelief stop her from caring about a murdered woman whom no one else cares about and has written off as unsolved. This is the kind of story that always has me riveted.

Again, I can’t resist a storyline with a teen sleuth, especially when she (or he) has to go against the grain of family and society in order to uncover the truth. Here is an intelligent teenager who also lives in a time when girls are expected simply to get married and produce children and Audrey Rose is learning how to perform autopsies and gets involved in a serial killer investigation (historically, Jack the Ripper) instead. Her search for clues leads her frighteningly closer to home. Victorian London. Foggy dark streets. A teenage sleuth bucking convention and also… a bit of romance. This story has it all!

I love anything Sherlock Holmes. So a YA teen detective story with the present-day descendants of Sherlock Holmes with mysterious deaths to solve? The title alone got me, then when I read the blurb, I was on it. Sherlock Holmes’ great great great granddaughter, Charlotte Holmes, already a brilliant sleuth consulting with Scotland Yard and Jamie Watson, the great great great grandson of John Watson are in America where they have ended up in the same boarding school. When a student dies under mysterious circumstances, Jamie and Charlotte’s paths cross, throwing them together, and they can only trust each other in a world where the enemy lurks very close… If I was a fish and you wanted to catch me, put this book on a hook and dangle it.

The blurb from this novel is what pulled me in initially and the story and writing kept me riveted. Flynn’s girlfriend disappears. It appears she may have been murdered and Flynn is the main person of interest. It rests on Flynn to find out what’s happened to her, both because he cares about her and also because he is innocent. He bravely must plunge ahead and figure out who would want to harm January. What he uncovers endangers his own life yet also forces him to contend with a secret he has been keeping from himself. Another story with a sensitive, brave teen sleuth who puts caring and truth ahead of everything else and finds what no one else could see. I need to read more from this author.

This book is not for the faint of heart. It was gripping but also haunting. Jazz is the son of a convicted serial killer. He’s bright and good-hearted, yet lives in fear of what kind of psycho could be lurking in himself because of his parentage. When a woman is found dead near his town, he sees clues at the crime scene that the police miss but he knows are his father’s signature. He begins to investigate and as always happens, danger draws closer as the truth is unearthed. What I loved about this story was Jazz. A sympathetic character, just trying to have a normal life with a best friend and a girl friend but who can’t get away from the fact he sees the world through a lens colored by having a serial killer for a father. Not to mention that his father isn’t finished with him, either.