The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie

Book: The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie
Author: Jaclyn Moriarty
Published: 2006

Bindy Mackenzie has got it all going for her. She's the top student in Year 11 at Ashbury School, she runs workshops for fellow students, she even holds down two jobs without breaking a sweat. But she's also humorless, ruthless, superior, and stunningly unable to relate to any other human beings even when she thinks she's trying. Frankly, it's a wonder somebody hasn't tried to murder her before this.

She's sure done a good job of alienating her entire Friendship and Development class. As she begins cracking around the edges, her strange behavior pushes them further away. Unfortunately, they're the only ones who have a chance at figuring out who might want to murder her. Now the question is . . . will they?

I've recently fallen in love with Jaclyn Moriarty's style. She writes epistolary novels that take on multiple voices and points of view, and manage to be warm and funny and just a little kooky without losing their sense of human reality.

As abovenoted, Bindy may be the girl least likely to have a book written about her. Yet even as you goggle at her supreme unlikeability, you actually kinda find yourself . . . liking her. Glimpses into her early life, supplied by the "My Life" assignment given to her by her FAD teacher, show how she got the way she is, and as her slow murder-by-poison sends her life into a tailspin, she begins to realize that the only way she'll make it through is by reaching out to the people she's never had any use for before.

The unlikely murder plot isn't going to satisfy any mystery buffs, but you'll forget about that as you follow Bindy through the torturous, hilarious process of becoming human. Kudos to Moriarty and I can't wait for the next adventure in Ashbury!