I've been thinking about this book for a week or so, and a few days ago I came across it on the shelf while I was looking for something else and decided to re-read it. It's still remarkably good, a clever mystery, fun characterization, and a well-told story all rolled into one. This is one of the books I wish I could read again for the first time--you know, if you could conveniently have the memory of the book wiped from your mind and come at it fresh. I would love to know how my adult self feels about it, stripped of all nostalgia.

In some respects, it hasn't aged well, specifically in its references to disabilities and Down syndrome. New readers may be taken aback at the use of the word "retarded" as a clinical term for a child with Down syndrome (also the archaic "Mongoloid" reference to same). For me, those were reminders of how much society has changed in the past 40 years, and how our vocabulary has evolved. Aside from that minor quibble, I felt the book held up very well. As I said, the characterization is very good; this is one of the books where I never have trouble remembering the character names, even years after reading and not just because one character's name is the answer to the riddle. It was well worth re-reading, and a welcome break from heavier stuff.

I read this on the recommendation of someone whose opinion I respect, although I understand that we have different tastes in literature. I like character and plot driven stories, he's more into world building and provocative concepts.

OK, I'm talking about my husband, but that is beside the point. This book was on his shelf and it looked intriguing so I gave it a shot. There were elements I liked and elements I did not like.

Of course to be fair, it was written for a younger audience, won the Newberry in fact, but I have to chalk up her target audience as another criticism. The plot and cast of characters were quite complicated and I know I would have lost interest in the book at that age. In fact, if I wasn't able to speed read, I would not have gotten through it at my present age.

Plot premise:

Sixteen people have been carefully selected to live in Sunset Towers. It turns out that they are all potential heirs to Sam Westing, a business tycoon who disappeared years ago, but lives on an estate near the Towers. Shortly into the story, Sam is found dead in his house. But he seems to know he would die, furthermore he has left instructions for his heirs to follow in order for them to acquire their share of his fortune.

The kicker: Westing claims he was murdered. By one of them! The first person to discover the culprit will win one hundred million dollars. The heirs are paired up and each pair given a set of clues. Each list of clues are incomplete so they need to find out the other pairs' lists to solve the murder mystery.

What I liked:

It was an intriguing mystery. I wanted to know what was going to happen and that kept me going to the end. And I will say without divulging anything that I found the ending satisfactory. It ended the way I like stories to end, with a resolution, like the "Amen" chord at the end of a hymn.

I also liked that, although the characters started out immensely unlikeable and cardboard thin, they actually started showing other dimensions as the story progressed and as I said, I do like where they all ended up.

OK, criticisms:

I felt the characters were a bit stereotyped and a few of them not very believable. In fact, I wish she had less characters and concentrated more on developing them. Some of them had real potential to be very interesting, but they stop short.

Some of the characters were not very believable. The girl nicknamed Turtle is so immature, she runs around kicking everyone in the shins, that for a good third of the book I thought she was around eight years old. It turns out she's thirteen. Sorry, this book was written in 1978. I was thirteen in 1978. I had hit hormonal adolescence big time. Boys were not yucky they were fascinating and while I had my hopeless crushes, I did not express it by kicking the objects of my desire in the shin.

Also, it was very hard to keep track of who everyone was and what the clues led up to. I found myself backtracking and re-reading pages frequently.

All in all, not a bad read, just not a very good one.

This was so good! I'm so mad I didn't read it as a kid.

I mean, I'm an adult reading this for the first time, and even though I'm notoriously bad at figuring out mysteries, this was still quite the puzzle. It was just as well-constructed as an adult mystery, just with a different tone. And a main character called Turtle.

What I liked best about this, besides the puzzle-like nature of it, was the human kindness it had at its core. It's been since April that I read this so my memory isn't that great on the specifics, but I remember even the most flawed of the many characters (who all live in the same building) were treated with understanding and compassion by the narrator, and ultimately the other characters as well. There were twists and turns galore, and practically all the characters had a secret to reveal, even when they weren't the murderer. The unlikely circumstances of all these characters being brought together by one man and his scheming was a prefect set up for a children's book, as the narrative would have had to work a little harder to make that believable if it were an adult story. As the title implies, the book is structured like a game, but who is the gamemaker?

Glad I finally picked this one up; it's another good one to add to the "Books I Missed in Childhood" shelf.

Read Harder Challenge 2021: Read a middle grade mystery.

"Object of the game: to win."

Read for the Back to Hogwarts Readathon 2024 challenge.
Category: School Spirit/Competition

Original Rating (2006): ★★★★★ (5 stars)
Revised Rating (2024): ★★★★ (4.25 star)

Quite a fun, quirky read!

I remember loving this book from way back when, and I'm happy that I still very much enjoyed it this second time around! Time has passed, and with it the memory of the solution to the puzzle, so it was fun trying to solve it. As for the characters, they're memorable and unique; although, my favorites had to be the two brothers, Theo and Chris Theodorakis.

The audiobook, while good, did leave a little to be desired with its scene transitions.

A clever, engrossing and funny mystery and a good introduction to the genre for young readers.

I expected a fun middle grade mystery that hopefully would be complex enough for adult readers as well - and I got that - but I didn't expect how brilliant it would be and how much I would grow attached to the characters. At first, I thought there were too many, and sure, the focus was more on some than on others, but that was very intentional and paid off in the end. The book just does a lot of things exactly right for my taste.

The Westing Game is first full-length mystery I remember reading. Well, besides Encyclopedia Brown and Nancy Drew books. But the one mystery that I could still have told you general details about the plot. It might have been the cleverness of the mystery or the absence of gore. It could have been identification with the shin-kicking protagonist, nicknamed 'Turtle.' It could have been the clever signals of winds and atmosphere that run throughout the book. Whatever it was, Raskin's story stayed with me for years.

Opening page:

"The sun sets in the west (just about everyone knows that), but Sunset Towers faced east. Strange!
Sunset Towers faced east and had no towers. This glittery, glassy apartment house stood alone on the Lake Michigan shore five stories high. Five empty stories high.
Then one day (it happened to be the Fourth of July), a most uncommon-looking delivery boy rode around town slipping letters under the doors of the chosen tenants-to-be. The letters were signed Barney Northrup.
The delivery boy was sixty-two years old, and there was no such person as Barney Northrup."

It is a variation on the manor house mystery, with a very disparate group of people brought together physically. Initially, they are convinced to rent or buy units in the newly constructed Sunset Towers, a small building that has room for a coffee shop, a restaurant and a small office, perfect for further enticing the future tenants. The tenants discover they have something additional in common when they are called together for the reading of Sam Westing's will. An isolating snowstorm ramps up the tension.

Narration is third person, which is solidly done. Initially, all the characters have aspects that make them seem flawed, or perhaps somewhat unlikable. Interestingly, however, it was probably one of the broadest casts I can remember reading: a black woman who is now a judge, who grew up poor; a Greek family, whose skin is 'darker' than the black woman's (an interesting concept for a young white kid!); a Chinese family, one a recent immigrant; a couple of economically limited white guys; a suburban white family; a single white older woman dressmaker. We pop in and out of most of their heads at some point, which ends up giving the reader more insight than they each have on each other.

There's accusations in a review or two of racism, but on adult read, I'd say that the racism is all internal to the characters, and Raskin does a solid job of showing how things a certain character might say or do regarding someone else's race is about their own knowledge deficits. I found only a couple of moments for me that might not pass the twenty-first century sniff test: One of the characters, Chris, has some sort of unspecified physical disability that impairs movement and speech. One of the questionable moments comes up when his brother, Theo, tells someone else that they don't need to talk to Chris like a baby, "because he's not retarded."

I usually avoid reading books from childhood, as I'm afraid of having precious memories tarnished. I thought The Westing Game held up well. It's told in an omniscient third person, and tends to switch person and location fairly frequently. In the book, the switches are clearly denoted with ****, but it's the sort of thing that probably won't translate well to audio, unless it was done with an ensemble cast.

 I think it is definitely a YA, but in the best sense of the word. Many of the techniques it uses are great for people that are younger and haven't figured some of this out yet; ie. a judge that still has some insecurities, or decides that she will not to compete for the prize, but to protect. The shifts in perspective and time work well for developing empathy--I think each character goes through a redemption arc, and even the one I remember disliking the most--Otis--was shown to be something other than appearance suggested. I ended up searching out a hardcover for my own library, and am glad to have it around.

2024 Re-Read
Did I actually enjoy this book, or is that just nostalgia talking?
I was, frankly, bored for most of the book, but the conclusion is just so dang sweet and fun that it makes me want to forget the part in the middle.

I am baffled! It's true - I did not figure out the answer to this play-along puzzle mystery. The fact is that I did not even try. I was completely distracted by disbelief. How did it happen that this book was awarded the 1979 Newbery Medal (awarded annually since 1922 for n  the most distinguished contribution to American literature for childrenn)?

The premise seemed unique and creative - a puzzle mystery in which the reader may play along, have a few laughs, and maybe learn a fact or two as well. But (pardon me if I'm behind the times) is a murder mystery really an appropriate plot for grade-school children?

Well, let's assume that it is (and I am behind the times). Next consider that there are sixteen (yes, 16!) suspects, paired up in eight teams of two persons. Each team receives four words and is tasked with using these words to discover the identity of the murderer (a task which offers a substantial reward - a $2,000,000 inheritance!). Now watch these 16 people scurrying about in an apartment building and up and down a snowy hillside and, in fact, even farther afield than that, trying both to solve the mystery and to foil their opponents. A recipe for chaos, you say? Indeed! How, pray tell, do school-age children benefit from a story such as this?

Okay. I'll cut the book some slack. Maybe this plot really would appeal to grade-school children. I have another criticism. This book attempts to be humorous. Sadly, the "humour" amounts to humiliation and scorn at the expense of the suspects. These include: a cleaning-lady; a doorman who has little formal education; a podiatrist (not a "real" doctor, in the opinion of his wife); an alcoholic woman; a tween who habitually kicks people in the shins; a boy who (because of an illness) uses a wheelchair and has difficulty speaking; an immigrant woman who cannot speak English; an injured woman who uses crutches; . . . . need I go on? They are all victimized at some point in the story.

So to get back to my disbelief. I find it difficult to believe that a book which not only condones but inadvertently encourages this kind of bullying (after all, it's funny, isn't it?) actually was - in 1979 - considered to be a "distinguished contribution to American literature for children". I would not recommend this book for children. I would not recommend this book to anyone.

If you are a fan of middle-grade play-along puzzle books, I would recommend The Red Blazer Girls series by Michael D. Beil. Realistic characters, educational puzzles, plots which make sense, no bullying or humiliation!

HOW HAVE I NOT READ THIS BEFORE? So clever, so fun, amazing ending. Love.

The mysterious death of an eccentric millionaire brings together an unlikely assortment of 16 heirs who must uncover the circumstances of his death, by participating in and solving a puzzle game, in order to inherit his fortune. These 16 heirs are all brought together under one roof as tenants of Sunset Towers which overlooks the mansion of the deceased millionaire.
Sharp, clever, witty and fun, this book is an absolute treat for people who love to read a good puzzle-mystery, complete with twists, multiple disguises/ aliases and illusions to keep one guessing till the end. The plot is not simple but the easy, straightforward way the author writes her story helps the reader keep up with all the twists and turns in the book. It is an ingenious piece of writing which consists of a lot of puzzle solving, bombs going off, some stealing, some serious shin-kicking by the 13 year old Turtle Wexler who is a child prodigy AND the most eccentric will one will ever come across (but one can always expect an eccentric millionaire to come up with an equally eccentric will)!
I am so glad I picked this book to read from the library (it was a complete random pick)!

"Hi, I'm Mike, and I'm an obsessive reader."
[Chorus] "Hi, Mike!"
"...and I'm a joiner. I've joined a bunch of Reading Challenges and it means I have a whole schedule of things to read to meet the challenges."
[…]
"But I needed a break, you-know, so I read something that's just been kicking around my TBR for a while. The Westing Game My tween boy and I listened to the audio book on a car trip."
[Overlapping success noises from Readers Anonymous meeting]

"But now, I want to use it for a Challenge..."

[groans from RA meeting]
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Good YA/young person mystery, Secretly has a happy ending, but don't tell!
SRC 2018 SUM 10.4, author Ellen Raskin
has initials in WONDn  ERn WOMAN.