Title: The Westing Game

Author: Ellen Raskin

Series: Stand-alone

Genre: Mystery (Middle Grade)

Pages: 192 Pages (Paperback)

Original Publication Date: December 1, 1978

Overall Rating:
Buy on Amazon · Add to Shelfari · Add to Goodreads

Summary from Back Cover

One fateful day, sixteen people gather for the reading of Samuel W. Westing’s will. To their surprise, the will turns out to be a contest, challenging the heirs to find out who among them is Westing’s murderer. Forging ahead, through blizzards, burglaries, and bombings, the game is on. Only two people hold all the clues. One of them is a Westing heir. The other is you!

My Thoughts

My class read The Westing Game together as a “class” book.  I don’t remember reading it completely because a lot of the story seemed unfamiliar, and at that time, I hated to read.  The only thing I remembered about the book was that the clues had something to do with the song “America, the Beautiful.”  In fact, I didn’t even remember the name until I read it in a comment on my Another Mystery Book post back in February.

Ever since I rediscovered this book back in February, I wanted to read it again.  The story’s hard to follow at times because of the constant change in voice, meaning the story’s narrated by each character multiple times within a chapter.  Other than that, if you’re looking for a fun, fast read, I recommend you give The Westing Game a try.  Even at only 196 pages in length, the story’ll keep you guessing until the very end.