The Girl Is Murder

The Girl is Murder
by Kathryn Miller Haines
2011

This is one of those books that creates an entire world full of people you  believe are real. It's 1942, Iris Anderson is adjusting to life in World War II in New York City and her world has turned upside down. Her Pop is home from the war missing a leg, her mom has just died, and the family finances have crashed. So Iris moves from a posh girls' private school to a public high school on the Lower East Side. Pop is a private detective, but he won't accept Iris's help even when it involves a boy at her new school.  

The old school   The new neighborhood
You feel like you go to school with Iris's new schoolmates, including girls who smoke in the girls room, a wild group of kids, and the newspaper staff who could be today's school geeks. Soon Iris is trying to help her father without his knowing, dancing at the Savoy with her new friends, and showing that she is one spunky girl. I like Haines adult mysteries about Rosie Winter in WWII, but I think I like the Iris story even better.

You can see the school that Iris went to uptown. It's the Chapin school. And can visit the Lower East Side too, It has become much more fashionable and trendy than it was. To get a better idea of what life was really like back in the day, visit the tenament museum.