The Westing Game

The Westing Game was published in 1978 and is Ellen Raskin's best-known novel. It won the Newbery Medal in 1979, and it has stayed in print and in classrooms for almost five decades. Raskin was a graphic designer and illustrator as well as a writer, and the book's structure reflects an interest in puzzles rather than in plot mechanics.

The novel is an ensemble piece with sixteen suspects, and its chapters move between them quickly enough that the reader has to keep a list. Raskin gives each character a reason to want the money and a secret of their own, and the clues are printed for the reader to work with, which is why the book is often described as a puzzle that children can actually solve. The four pairs are a device for making the whole cast interact without forcing it, and the mystery is resolved by argument rather than by a chase.

Raskin wrote three other novels for children before her death in 1984, and none of them had the same reach. The Westing Game has been adapted for film and television and is on most lists of the best American children's mysteries. It is a standalone, and it is the rare book in which the reader is invited to compete with the characters.