The Vanishing Stair

The Vanishing Stair is a novel by the American writer Maureen Johnson, published in 2019 by Katherine Tegen Books. It is the second book of the Truly Devious series, and it continues a mystery laid out across the whole sequence.

Stevie Bell is a young woman with a specialist's interest in an old crime. The case that made Ellingham Academy famous in 1916, a kidnapping followed by three murders, has occupied her for years, and she chose the school because of it. By the time this book opens she has solved a killing that happened while she was a pupil there, only to be removed from the school by parents who consider her safety more important than her investigation. That leaves her at home with a cold case she cannot reach and a set of questions about the present that are harder than the historical ones: what the academy's staff know, what her fellow students are hiding, and whether the two cases are connected.

The series is built to be read in order, and each volume takes the same characters further into both the old mystery and their own rivalries.