









































When we read crime fiction, we often 
expect a cast dominated by adult 
characters. This is likely a result of 
decades’ worth of popular crime fiction 
narratives almost exclusively containing 
adult characters. The earliest literature 
in the mystery and crime genre that was 
targeted towards younger audiences 
contained teenage detectives and adult 
criminals because it allowed the younger 
audiences to read about powerful 
teenagers overthrowing adult authority 
while still only engaging in acceptable 
moral activities in an attempt to decrease 
or discourage juvenile delinquency. 
A newer trend among young adult 
crime fiction novels is the adolescent 
playing the part of the criminal in 
addition to the detective. Applying 
social cognitive theory explored in the 
study conducted by Black and Barnes 
to the roles of adolescents in Karen M. 

McManus’s young adult mystery novel 
One of Us Is Lying and its sequel One 
of Us Is Next, this essay will analyze 
the novels’ adolescent characters to 
show how adolescent characters in 
young adult crime fiction reflect their 
young audiences’ desires to subvert 
adult hierarchies while still displaying 
acceptable morals and how they 
possibly influence their sense of morality. 

How Young Adult Crime Fiction 
Influences and Reflects Modern 
Adolescents: An Examination of 
Karen M. McManus’s One of Us Is 
Lying and One of Us Is Next 

Katelyn Mathew, Ball State University

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Mathew

Crime fiction as a genre has notably been geared towards adult audiences, most 
likely a result of the violent subject matter including but not limited to murder, rape, 
torture, and gore. However, the crime fiction genre isn’t exclusive to adult audiences. 
Young adult (YA) crime fiction, emerging in the 1920s and gaining popularity around 
the 1950s, is targeted towards younger audiences between the ages of twelve and 
eighteen. Despite catering towards a younger audience, young adult fiction—
including young adult crime fiction—is a genre that deserves recognition and serious 
discussion. Focusing on the roles of adolescents in Karen M. McManus’s young adult 
mystery novel One of Us Is Lying and its sequel One of Us Is Next, as well as research 
on the effects of YA fiction, this essay will analyze the adolescent characters to show 
that adolescent characters in young adult crime fiction reflect and possibly influence 
young audiences’ sense of morality, especially in a society in which technology plays 
an integral role in adolescents’ everyday lives.  
 To understand the genre of YA crime fiction and its audience, it is important to 
note its origins. In “Teenage Detectives and Teenage Delinquents,” Ilana Nash analyzes 
the society which created YA crime fiction and traces its roots back to 1880s writer 
Edward Stratemeyer, who wrote many teenage heroism stories for boys in the ten–
fifteen age range. It wasn’t until the 1920s when Stratemeyer’s publishing company, 
called Stratemeyer Syndicate, published the Hardy Boys series, which became one 
of the first, if not the first, children’s detective series featuring recurring teenage 
characters as detectives (Nash 73–74). The Nancy Drew series was quick to follow in 
the 1930s, and around twenty years later, both series’ popularity rocketed. This was 
after World War II, which brought an onslaught of teenage independence and social 
influence. Nash explains, “The literatures of teens and crime used the image of the 
teenager to address anxieties about social control and the future of American society” 
(Nash 73). Many believed that these stories and other similar stories would encourage 
behavior that was deemed acceptable and would discourage teenage delinquency 
as well as, ultimately, the erosion of American morals in the younger generation. To 
accomplish this, the role of adolescents in YA crime fiction was that of detectives 
upholding traditional values that reinforced conservative hierarchies of class, race, and 
gender. For example, those who came from lower-class households were depicted as 
more susceptible to delinquency and violence. Girls faced sexual activity as a factor to 
determine their delinquency whereas the boys’ sexual activity was under less scrutiny, 
their delinquency being primarily focused on violence and vandalism (Nash 76). The 
desired result would be to encourage readers to adhere to the boundaries and values 
portrayed. 
 While it is still true today that adolescent characters in this genre are given the 

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role of the detective to bring the criminal to justice, the morally sound detective is not 
the only role adolescents occupy anymore. John G. Cawelti identifies four essential 
character roles in mystery fiction: The victim, the criminal, the detective, and those 
threatened by the crime but incapable of solving it (91). The original YA crime fiction 
writers from the 1930s up until recently have ensured their teenage characters filled 
the roles of the detective in an attempt to decrease juvenile delinquency, as Nash 
explained, but modern YA crime fiction seems to have changed this convention. Now 
more than ever, audiences of this genre are seeing teenagers in the roles of all of those 
presented by Cawelti, and some even redefine these roles.  
 A modern example of YA crime fiction redefining some of these roles is 
McManus’s One of Us Is Lying. For some background, in this novel, high school student 
Simon runs a notorious gossip app called “About That” that regularly exposes Bayview 
High’s students’ secrets. During an after-school detention where the supervising 
teacher exits the room for a short amount of time, leaving students Bronwyn, Nate, 
Cooper, Addy, and Simon alone, Simon mysteriously dies. The four other students 
in detention, later dubbed the Bayview Four, are all potential suspects in his death 
because the gossip app Simon ran had queued up their secrets next, providing 
them all with a motive for murder. In the end, it is revealed that Simon suffered a 
fatal allergic reaction that he caused as a form of suicide because he wanted to die 
in infamy while bringing down the four other students with him. In his manifesto, 
which gets revealed towards the end of the book, Simon wrote down that he thought 
about conducting a school shooting but “that’s been done to death. It doesn’t have 
the same impact anymore. I want to be more creative. More unique. I want my suicide 
to be talked about for years” (McManus 322).  In this book, it is clear that Simon is 
simultaneously playing the role of the victim and also of the criminal, with the other 
criminals being his two friends who helped him execute the phases of his plan after 
his death. Like Simon, the four students who are blamed for Simon’s death—Bronwyn, 
Addy, Nate, and Cooper—fill two roles in the narrative, the detective and those 
threatened by the crime. Unlike Cawelti’s original formula, which stated that those 
who were threatened by the crime were unable to solve it, the characters in One of Us 
Is Lying are the ones who solve it. In fact, it seems as though it is up to them because 
the adult authority falls short of discovering the truth themselves. 
 More unique to One of Us Is Lying compared to early YA crime fiction is modern 
technology’s consistent, and almost intrusive, role in adolescents’ lives. Technology 
has become an integral part of modern teens’ lives, and the novels reflect that and use 
those technologies—more specifically, social media—to create a plot that generates 
relatability among young readers. Simon finds a community online that fuels his 
hatred towards his classmates of a higher social ranking. According to Janae, Simon 

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“started spending all his time online with a bunch of creepers, fantasizing about 
getting revenge on everyone who made him miserable” (McManus 322). In this 
context, “creepers” refers to individuals who shared Simon’s twisted and masochistic 
fantasies of causing harm to others with a sense of higher self-worth. Furthermore, 
Simon’s “About That” app spreads secrets among Bayview High and exposes its 
students for the sake of drama and gossip. Simon later uses it to expose the four 
students at the top of the social ladder—the Bayview Four—because he is jealous of 
their social status and wants to be the catalyst of their downfall. In the early stages of 
the investigation following Simon’s mysterious death, Detective Wheeler told Addy 
in a conversation that read as a soft interrogation, “Kids your age are under a lot of 
pressure today…The social media alone—it’s like you can’t make a mistake anymore, 
can you? It follows you everywhere” (McManus 83). The intent of this quote in context 
was to persuade Addy into admitting guilt, but in the greater context of the novel, 
and even in reality, it shows how prevalent the impact of social media and technology 
is on adolescents. Young readers who have grown up in the age of social media have 
most likely faced some form of cyberbullying, so when they read of Simon facing 
the consequences of his actions, they must feel some sort of satisfaction. It enables 
them to read a situation in which a bully loses and the victims win. Although it was 
in Simon’s plan to die, his ultimate plan was to ruin the lives of the Bayview Four and 
frame Nate as his murderer. The Bayview Four, along with the help of Maeve, ruin 
Simon’s plans and end up exposing his detestable and manipulative actions. The 
genre of young adult literature (YAL) provides a sense of wish fulfillment, though 
Connors claims it is not fulfillment as “the life we wish we could live, but as the power 
and influence we wish we could have” (3). This is what grants readers satisfaction: The 
bully facing justice and the consequences of their actions, something that victims of 
cyberbullying or other types of bullying undoubtedly want to experience.  
 With this context of modern adolescents and their roles in mind, one can begin 
to analyze modern YA crime fiction as it pertains to its effects on audiences today. A 
study done by Jessica Black and Jennifer Barnes assessed how fiction—with a focus 
on YA fiction—impacts readers’ empathy, moral identity, and moral agency. Their 
findings concluded that exposure to adult fiction and YA fiction were both connected 
to integrity, or “the desire for consistency between moral principles and actions,” 
but perceived moral agency was exclusively linked to YA fiction (Black and Barnes 
157). Furthermore, across studies, YA fiction was found to be consistently associated 
with empathic concern, integrity, and moral agency. These findings align with social 
cognitive theory, which states that “learning occurs in a social context with a dynamic 
and reciprocal interaction of the person, environment, and behavior” (Black and Barnes 
149). Or, when applied to the context of this paper, consumers of literature can absorb 

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the moral behavior displayed by fictional characters. This would support the efforts 
made by publishers in the 1950s when they were pushing for the representation of 
traditional values in the form of teenage detectives in YA crime fiction, though those 
traditional values were imposed by white conservative middle-class Americans and are 
no longer the exclusive standard by which Western society at large judges morality. 
As a result of Black and Barnes’ study, which shows how influential the genre of YA 
fiction is to its audience, it is paramount to critically analyze its content because the 
adolescent audience will soon assimilate into and assume active roles in society. 
 These research findings provided by Black and Barnes apply to One of Us Is 
Lying because morally ambiguous, morally sound, and morally unsound actions 
are all performed by adolescent characters in the major roles identified by Cawelti. 
As previously mentioned, in One of Us Is Lying, the criminals are high school 
students. Simon runs a gossip app that was designed to expose his peers for his own 
entertainment, something that many would agree is not particularly morally sound 
across multiple standards. Furthermore, Simon’s two friends that agree to help him 
in his plan to kill himself and then pass the blame to his classmates—whom he hates 
because they were ranked high on the social hierarchy whereas he, despite his best 
efforts, was always on the bottom—also make questionable choices, including the 
instance where one of them, Jake, attacks Addy and nearly kills her because she 
messed up the plan near the end. Janae, Simon’s other friend who initially agreed to 
help execute his plan, decides near the end that she would no longer go along with his 
plan to plant evidence on Addy because she realized Addy was not as awful as Simon 
led her to believe. When Addy asks Janae why she didn’t stick to the plan to plant the 
evidence on her, Janae says, “You were nice to me…I know we’re probably not really 
friends and you probably hate me now, but…I couldn’t do that to you” (McManus 327). 
When Jake attacks Addy after she discovers the full truth, Janae also helps her then. 
This blurring of lines between roles redefines Cawelti’s roles for mystery narratives. 
 The four main characters who play the part of detective also blur the lines of 
roles because they were actively hiding something viewed as morally wrong. Bronwyn, 
for instance, was hiding the fact that she stole the answers for a chemistry exam to 
uphold her perfect GPA to be accepted into an Ivy League university. Nate’s secret 
is that he had been selling drugs. For Addy, it’s how she cheated on her boyfriend. 
Cooper’s secret was that he is gay, and although his secret is not nearly on the same 
level as his peers’, it was still something that wouldn’t have been widely accepted. 
He is also rumored to have been using steroids to enhance his athletic performance 
in sports, though this would be revealed as a lie. With each of these characters not 
upholding the traditional values, one might argue that despite their ability to bring 
the truth to light, they are not the role models Nash wrote about in her discussion of 

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adolescents in YA crime fiction.  
 However, as a result of Black and Barnes’ study which found strong associations 
between the consumption of YA fiction and empathy, it can be said that reading books 
such as One of Us Is Lying is not inherently detrimental to their audiences simply 
because their adolescent characters occasionally misbehave. The main characters 
in the Bayview Four adhere to more progressive standards of morals. The teen 
delinquents, Simon and Jake, are written in a negative light and are met with justice. 
For Simon, this means his malicious plans are ruined and are brought to life. For Jake, 
this means being arrested. Consequently, this novel still encourages youth to be more 
aligned with the adolescents who fill the detective role and those threatened by the 
crime than the teen criminals. 
 As previously mentioned, these adolescents adhere to a more progressive 
and modern moral code that does not, for example, villainize promiscuity or 
homosexuality. These depictions could be an attempt to change the YA crime genre’s 
penchant for supporting the white middle class values that were being pushed by 
the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series. As well as attempting to change these genre 
conventions, they reflect the shift in morals present in younger generations, who 
are the target audiences for these novels. For example, a poll conducted by Gallup, a 
global analytics firm, found that the percentage of U.S. adults who identified as a part 
of the LGBTQIA+ community has “increased to a new high of 7.1%, which is double 
the percentage from 2012,” which is largely due to the influx of LGBTQIA+ identifiers 
in Generation Z (Jones). The representation of non-heterosexual characters in One of 
Us Is Lying, though minimal, reflects this trend. While this representation is small in 
comparison to the representation of heterosexuality in McManus’s novels, it does not 
villainize or demoralize the characters who identify as such. In fact, Cooper, one of the 
main characters, is gay and helps the other three of the Bayview Four solve Simon’s 
death. His boyfriend also aids in the uncovering of the truth of the crime. Audiences 
also want to see more representation of POC characters in YAL, which also diverts 
from the focus of the first YA crime fiction narratives since they aimed to represent and 
prioritize the white middle and upper class. One of Us Is Lying takes a step to cater to 
this with the character of Bronwyn. She diverts from the stereotypes maintained by 
the era of The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew by representing a POC adolescent woman 
who is intelligent and has attainable aspirations of attending an ivy league university. 
YAL is seeing an influx of diversity, but the YA crime fiction genre still has plenty of 
room to become more diverse and inclusive. One of Us Is Lying is a step towards this 
representation. Having the more diverse teen detectives—those who are meant to 
display the behaviors which young audiences are meant to draw influence from—
demonstrates how McManus’s YA crime novels have begun to push the genre forward 

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as well as reflect the progressive values of their audience. 
 While the YA crime genre has shifted since the Nancy Drew series and the Hardy 
Boys series to reflect changes in audiences’ values, one aspect that has prevailed is 
the adolescent desire to overthrow adult hierarchies. The first notable signs of fear of 
teenage rebellion sprouted from post-war America when adults’ anxieties of atomic 
warfare during the Cold War shifted “to the image of the nation’s youth” (Nash 76). 
The fear of teenage rebellion was met with the desire to subdue and control teenage 
behavior, which has continued to the present. Today, similar acts of teenage rebellion 
from the past are still apparent. Also increasingly present is the number of youth 
involved in organized protests and rallies, such as March for Our Lives and climate 
change demonstrations. Psychologist Carl Pickhardt identifies two common types 
of teenage rebellion: Rebellion of non-conformity and rebellion of noncompliance, 
otherwise stated as rebellion against adult authority (Pickhardt). This rebellion against 
adult authority comes from adolescents’ “desire for power and control,” according to 
Sean P. Connors, researcher of YAL (Connors 3). The adult authority falls short in One 
of Us Is Lying in multiple instances, such as failing to discover the true person who 
is at fault for Simon’s death, and even wrongly arresting Nate, causing the rest of the 
Bayview Four to have to prove his innocence in their process of uncovering the real 
murderer. When Bronwyn first learns of Nate’s unfounded arrest, she says, “You’ve seen 
how screwed up this investigation is. They thought I did it for a while. They’re wrong. 
I’m positive they’re wrong” (McManus 276). The reason the authorities believe Nate 
to be the murderer is because it was in Simon’s plan for Janae to plant evidence and 
frame one of the Bayview Four. Janae is meant to plant the evidence on Addy, but 
after Addy is friendly to her, she changes the plan. The rest of the Bayview Four rebel 
against adult authorities’ ruling and investigate the murder case themselves because 
the adult authorities fell for the lie. Reading about these adults’ shortcomings and 
the adolescents’ ability to subvert their authority by solving the mysteries themselves 
reflects and satiates young adult readers’ desires to overthrow adult hierarchies in 
reality.  
 The sequel to One of Us Is Lying, One of Us Is Next, contains the same aspects of 
the first novel that reflects and influences its modern adolescent audience. As a basis 
for context, the novel follows the younger sister of Bronwyn, named Maeve, and two 
other students named Phoebe and Knox. These three are the targets of a dangerous, 
and even fatal, game of “truth or dare” that sprung up as a copycat of Simon’s infamous 
gossip app to continue Simon’s legacy. While none of the main three characters are 
suspected of being behind the anonymously run game of “truth or dare,” they are each 
impacted by it as they all have secrets that could get out if they choose truth instead of 
the perilous dare. In One of Us Is Next, Cawelti’s identified roles are also mainly filled by 

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adolescent characters. Maeve, Phoebe, and Knox fill the role of the detective and are 
also somewhat threatened by the crime, though in a different way compared to how 
the four students in the previous book were threatened. The victims are all high school 
students, and the main criminal is an adult named Jared, who is brought to justice in 
the end. It could be argued that Phoebe’s younger siblings Emma and Owen could also 
be classified as criminals since they teamed up with Jared for a short amount of time, 
but when assessing their intentions, it is clear Jared took advantage of their young age 
and emotions. A deeper analysis of these characters’ situations will be conducted later 
in this essay to support the claim that the adolescent characters who have contributed 
in some way to the crime are not used as positive models for the young audience to 
imitate in their formation of morals and behaviors. While Jared, an adult, is the main 
criminal in this novel who exemplifies a corrupt and violent standard of morals, it still 
stands that adolescents fill the major roles. 
 Like the first novel in the series, technology plays a major role in One of Us Is 
Next as well. However, the gossip app “About That” is gone and is instead replaced 
with a “truth or dare” game conducted over text that results in the death of a student 
named Brandon. The digital footprint left by the one controlling the game and picking 
its victims leads Knox, Maeve, and Phoebe to discover a Reddit thread that gives them 
enough clues to reveal their identities and motive. In the first book, technology’s role 
was the root cause of the issues that arose; in the sequel, it helped track down the one 
responsible and bring him to justice. In both, technology—specifically social media—
is a method of exposing students and enacting revenge. In real life, the same can be 
true. Cyberbullying—such as the “truth or dare” game in the novel—is increasingly 
prevalent among modern adolescents as they become more reliant on social media 
and technology because individuals feel a sense of protection from their words and 
behavior when they are conducted online. Gianesini and Brighi explain that this is 
because when individuals communicate online, “they feel that they are a part of 
an anonymous mass and therefore tend not to take responsibility for their actions 
or do not perceive their actions as particularly harmful because ‘virtual’ is not ‘real’” 
(8–9). The perceived disconnect between “virtual” and “real” enables cyberbullies to 
victimize their targets easier. However, the pain and torment victims face as a result of 
cyberbullying is not easier to manage just because it is facilitated online. After Knox’s 
secret is revealed during “truth or dare”, he narrates, “How the hell am I supposed to 
show up at school tomorrow? Or ever?” (McManus 151). When adolescents read these 
lines, many of them are likely to relate to how Knox is feeling because of how prevalent 
cyberbullying has become in recent decades. These instances in One of Us Is Next 
reflect not only the constant use of technology in modern adolescents, but they also 
reflect the unique struggles they face as a result. 

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 Similarly to how each of the Bayview Four characters all have flaws (or perceived 
flaws) in One of Us Is Lying, the main protagonists in the sequel are also written with 
more moral ambiguity than the earliest YA crime fiction adolescent protagonists 
discussed by Nash. For example, Phoebe sleeps with her sister Emma’s boyfriend 
behind her back and Maeve tells an embarrassing secret about Knox to her sister 
Bronwyn which gets leaked to the whole school.   Again, although the findings 
of Barnes and Black’s research that assessed how YAL impacts audiences in terms 
of empathy, morality, and integrity, reading about these characters’ flaws are not 
inherently causing their audiences to misbehave. There are not as many teen criminals 
present in One of Us Is Next as there were in One of Us Is Lying, but there are a few 
examples of adolescents who, intentionally or not, contribute to the main crime. 
These examples would include Emma and Owen, Phoebe’s siblings. Emma wanted 
revenge on a student named Brandon, who accidentally killed her father and cheated 
on her with her sister Phoebe, and started chatting with Jared—the main criminal—
on Reddit, but she backed out as soon as she realized how violent and cruel Jared’s 
plans were since she only wanted to expose unflattering secrets. When revealing the 
truth at the very end, Emma says, “As soon as the Truth or Dare game started, I hated 
it. I regretted everything. I told Jared to shut it down, and he said he would…But 
the game kept going. I didn’t understand why, but I was afraid to get in touch with 
Jared again.” She begins to cry and adds, “Brandon wasn’t supposed to die” (McManus 
336–337). Owen took his sister’s place in the chat room without Emma’s knowledge 
because he saw how devastated she was as a result of her ex-boyfriend cheating on 
her and tried to continue speaking with Jared, but once he realized how far Jared was 
taking the game, he also backed out. After Brandon died fulfilling a dare from “truth 
or dare,” Owen messages Jared still under the guise of his sister and says, “That wasn’t 
supposed to happen” and then promptly “ghosts” him (McManus 371). It is evident that 
their intentions—publicly humiliating the one who caused their father’s death with 
teen gossip—were not criminal or malevolent, though the consequences were. As 
such, these books still encourage youth to be more aligned with the adolescents who 
fill the roles of detective and those threatened by the crime than those who contribute 
to the crime. 
 Like One of Us Is Lying, One of Us Is Next also reflects its audience’s more 
progressive values compared to the traditional values identified by Nash. The three 
main protagonists—Maeve, Knox, and Phoebe—as well as some tertiary characters, 
demonstrate these shifts. Younger audiences have an increased desire to see 
representation of diverse characters in narratives. It is important to note that One of 
Us Is Next is undoubtedly not the most diverse YA crime novel, but it is worth noting 
the difference in representation compared to the earliest YA crime fiction narrative 

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to recognize the progression of the genre. Representation of illness has increased 
in YAL—a notable example would be John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars—but its 
representation in YA crime fiction is still low. Maeve’s character represents a character 
who struggled with leukemia in her past and grapples with a potential relapse 
throughout the novel. Representation of race is also present in the novel with Maeve’s 
Columbian heritage and Luis and his family’s Mexican heritage. Another aspect of 
the novel that reflects the desire for more diverse characters and the audiences’ more 
progressive values is the—somewhat limited—representation of sexual orientations. 
Cooper, who was in the closet in One of Us Is Lying, appears in this novel as openly gay 
and in a happy relationship with his boyfriend. Having more diverse teen detectives—
those who are meant to display the behaviors which young audiences are meant to 
draw influence from—demonstrates how McManus’s YA crime novels have begun to 
push the genre forward as well as reflect the progressive values of their audience.  
 As well as catering towards its audiences’ desire for more representation and 
progressive values, One of Us Is Next provides readers with teen detectives who 
overpower adult authority. Like the first novel in the series, the adult authorities are 
unable to solve the crime of Brandon’s death; in fact, they do not recognize that the 
death of Brandon is even a crime until the three teen detectives—Maeve, Knox, and 
Phoebe—solve it for them. The adults are written as primarily uninvolved, resulting 
in the responsibility of solving the crime to fall onto the kids. Their connections and 
unique perspectives grant them the ability to uncover things the adult authorities 
were unable to. In one scene where Maeve and Knox are attempting to hack into 
Knox’s mother’s work computer, Maeve succeeds without any struggle. She does not 
even have to hack into it because she guesses common passwords until she gets it 
right on the third try. She tells Knox, “Parents are the single worst threat to any type of 
cyber security” (287). It is by the adults’ incompetencies that they are able to succeed. 
Seeing these adult authorities failing and the teens succeeding feeds into the wish 
fulfillment many readers of this genre seek. Connors explains that reading about 
adolescents pushing back against authority “challenges readers to look critically at 
the power structures that envelop and seek to construct them” (3). He asserts that it 
is important for adolescents to read these types of novels, even in school settings, 
because allowing students to read YAL that includes characters who resist oppressive 
power systems “invite[s] students to acknowledge their own potential to act” (Connors 
20). Although Connors is discussing YA dystopia, the same can be said about YA crime 
fiction. This is especially true concerning McManus’s One of Us Is Lying and One of Us 
Is Next because they are both set in the mostly relatable setting of a public school and 
reflect the struggles adolescents from their technology-infused generation face. 
 Although YA crime fiction is for a younger audience, it would be unreasonable 

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to be skeptical of the merit of the literature that falls under this genre. In fact, because 
this genre contains subjects that are geared more towards mature audiences—such 
as crime and violence—and is targeted towards a demographic who are in one of the 
most critical moments for their development, it requires our attention. The findings of 
Black and Barnes’s study as well as the research by Nash prove the importance of YAL, 
and when applied to YA crime fiction—especially more modern YA crime fiction—
these implications are even more critical for this reason. Not only does the analysis 
of YA crime literature reveal the desires and practices of its audience, but it also 
influences its audience in ways that may contribute to their formation of morals.  
 
 

Mathew

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Jones, Jeffrey M. “LGBT Identification in U.S. Ticks up to 7.1%.” Gallup.com, Gallup, 10 
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McManus, Karen M. One of Us Is Lying. New York, Delacorte Press, 2017. 

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Nash, Ilana. “Teenage Detectives and Teenage Delinquents.” The Cambridge 
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