Good Girl, Bad Blood

Good Girl, Bad Blood (2021) is the second novel in the three-part A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder series of young adult crime fiction. The first book in the series, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (2020), became a multimillion-copy New York Times bestseller. It was also author Holly Jackson’s first book. Jackson is British, but she writes the series from the perspective of a native-born American teenager living in Connecticut. As a result, British colloquial speech occasionally crops up in the dialogue.

The series finale is entitled As Good as Dead (2021), and Jackson has completed a standalone thriller, Five Survive (2022). A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder was being adapted as a six-part series for BBC television to air in 2023. This study guide and all its page citations are based on the Kindle edition of the book.

The story is set in the small town of Fairview, Connecticut. All the action takes place during a two-month period in an unspecified contemporary year. It begins with the airing of a podcast episode on March 27, proceeds through a missing persons case that begins on April 24, and ends in the third week of May. Events are described from the third-person limited perspective of 18-year-old high school student Pippa Fitz-Amobi. In addition to the narrative built around Pip’s point of view, the novel also contains graphics and written material, such as transcriptions of witness interviews, Missing posters, maps related to the case, and Pip’s own case notes. All these materials help emphasize the true-crime nature of the investigation that Pip undertakes.

As the novel begins, Pip is preparing to upload the final episode of her true crime podcast entitled A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. She reflects bitterly on the trauma she and her family endured as she investigated and solved a cold-case double murder several months earlier. Less than a month after uploading her podcast, Pip finds herself embroiled in a missing persons case when the older brother of a classmate disappears. While retracing the final steps of Jamie Reynolds on the night he vanished, Pip and her friends discover a catfish scheme that ties his disappearance to a decades-old serial killer story and the quest for vengeance by one of its survivors. As Pip unwittingly helps the catfish find his intended target, the novel explores the themes of The Use and Abuse of Social Media, Questions of Identity, and The Pursuit of Truth and Justice.

Plot Summary

Pip Fitz-Amobi is still recovering from the effects of her cold-case murder investigation when the story begins. After nearly dying herself in the process, Pip vows never to publish another true crime podcast again. The personal toll was too high. Now that she’s helped put two murderers in jail and forced a serial rapist to stand trial, Pip is ready to join her community to mourn the deaths of the two original crime victims—a girl named Andie Bell and her boyfriend, Sal Singh. Pip herself is now dating Sal’s younger brother, Ravi.

While Pip attends the community’s outdoor memorial service for the two dead students, she bumps into 24-year-old Jamie Reynolds. He is her friend Connor’s older brother and seems anxious and distracted while everyone else is participating in the ceremony. A day later, Connor comes to Pip’s house to say that Jamie has gone missing and the police won’t do anything about it because he isn’t a minor. Pip is reluctant to get involved but finally realizes that she is the only person in a position to help. With Ravi’s assistance, she starts investigating leads to Jamie’s whereabouts. In addition to circulating a Missing poster, Pip uses social media to ask schoolmates and townsfolk to send her photos and videos taken on the evening of the memorial. She hopes to spot Jamie in some of these pictures.

Pip is eventually able to piece together Jamie’s movements that night. When he shows up at a high school house party, it becomes apparent that he is trailing a girl he calls Layla. Pip soon learns that Layla is an internet catfish who has been preying on young men in the community. She has used the photo of a real local girl to establish contact and seems to be targeting white males with brown hair who are 29-30 years old.

As Pip and her friends delve deeper into the case, it becomes apparent that Layla has set Jamie up to kill someone. The victim turns out to be newspaper volunteer Stanley Forbes. Stanley is the son of a notorious serial killer from 20 years earlier, and he helped his father lure children to their deaths. Because he was a minor when his father was convicted, Stanley’s records have been sealed, and his identity is hidden when he is finally released from juvenile detention at age 18.

Even though Stanley has been living a quiet life in Fairview and trying to atone for his past, the brother of his father’s last murder victim is seeking revenge. Masquerading as Layla, kindly neighbor Charlie Green uses Pip’s formidable detective skills to lead him directly to Stanley. Charlie kills Stanley, leaving Pip to ponder her role in the affair and how far she would go to achieve justice.