The Westing Game

Raskin, Ellen. (1978). The Westing Game. New York, NY: Avon Flare Books.

Brief Annotation: The book begins with six Chicago apartments being rented by invitation to specially selected tenants. We are told that "one was a bookie, one was a burglar, one was a bomber, and one was a mistake." A young tenant, Turtle Wexler, goes to investigate the smoke coming out of the mansion of the industrialist Samuel Westing, and finds a dead body on the floor. The next day, sixteen of the tenants are named beneficiaries in Westing's unusual will. The will asserts that Westing was killed by one of the beneficiaries, and sets up eight teams of two people, gives them some money and one clue per team. The teams then work out different methods for trying to make sense of their disparate clues, causing conflict within families and among friends as the teams try to solve the riddle of the will while still conducting their normal lives of school, work, and family time. The characters are a times suspicious of each other, at times supportive, and the reader is kept guessing and trying to work out the meaning of the different clues until the very end of the book.
Genre: Mystery
Grade Level: 3-7
Readers who will like this: Readers who like mysteries, readers who like puzzles
Response/Rating (1-4): 4. I have not read this book since the time I read it when it first came out (sadly enough), and I was just as engrossed in solving the clues and following the relationships between the different heirs as I was then. The relationships between the families and friends are contentious and fascinating, and the relationships that form between the paired heirs have very interesting dynamics that develop as the plot develops. I would recommend this book to almost any reader.
One question you would ask before a read aloud: I would read them the first page (four very short paragraphs), and then ask the students what they think this book will be about.