Book Summary
The Westing
Game is a mystery novel, about 16 tenants of an apartment building trying to
solve who is the culprit of Sam Westing’s demise. At stake, his 200 million
dollar fortune. This Newbery Medal winner is sure to have you quickly turn
pages anticipating every new clue to find the villain amongst all the
characters in this book.
Reference
Raskin, E. (1978).
The westing game. New York: Dutton.
Impressions:
The Westing Game is very
fun to read. The
book has many characters and I appreciated how Raskin introduces them
as apartment dwellers, helping me see them in some physical
space. Raskin does a great job describing things and spaces with
simple adjectives. The book feels like a screenplay written in small
sections, one after another, aiming to develop characters and push the story
along. From the perspective of a mystery novel, each section leaves
the reader with something unresolved, but intriguing enough to keep reading.
The puzzle of the book is the layers that Raskin writes into the
characters as well as the mystery to solve.
Turtle, a young character and heroine of
the novel novel will certainly allow young students to want to read the book.
She’s feisty and a great role model for young mystery readers.
Keeping up with all the characters can
be difficult and reading the book, chapter by chapter will require a break,
here and there, to digest each new development in the 30 chapters. I really
appreciated that Raskin thoughtfully used all the characters in the book to
solve the puzzle. I would have been frustrated otherwise.
Professional 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.
THE WESTING GAME. (1978). Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved from https://libproxy.library.unt.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/916900507?accountid=7113
Library
Uses:
Grades 5-12:
The book serves as a brilliant example of the mystery genre and would allow
librarians to discuss the elements of mystery fiction, all present in this
novel. The book is also an opportunity to talk about lying, since the reader is
challenged to determine who is telling the truth. Since the book was written in
1979, there are opportunities to teach vocabulary words, by chapter. The book
is perfect for character analysis exercises and activities, with plenty of
choices for a class to choose from.
