Two lonely teenage girls in 1940s Washington, DC, discover they have a penchant for solving crimes—and an even greater desire to commit them—in the new mystery novel by Macavity Award-winning novelist John Copenhaver.
Philippa Watson, a good-natured yet troubled seventeen-year-old, has just moved to Washington, DC. She’s lonely until she meets Judy Peabody, a brilliant and tempestuous classmate. The girls become unlikely friends and fashion themselves as intellectuals, drawing the notice of Christine Martins, their dazzling English teacher, who enthralls them with her passion for literature and her love of noirish detective fiction.
When Philippa returns a novel Miss Martins has lent her, she interrupts a man grappling with her in the shadows. Frightened, Philippa flees, unsure who the man is or what she’s seen. Days later, her teacher returns to school altered: a dark shell of herself. On the heels of her teacher’s transformation, a classmate is found dead in the Anacostia River—murdered—the body stripped and defiled with a mysterious inscription.
As the girls follow the clues and wrestle with newfound feelings toward each other, they suspect that the killer is closer to their circle than they imagined—and that the greatest threat they face may not be lurking in the halls at school, or in the city streets, but creeping out from a murderous impulse of their own.
"Fans like me of John Copenhaver’s debut novel Dodging and Burning will be thrilled with The Savage Kind which, like its predecessor, wraps a page-turning story in elegant prose. Once again, in Judy and Philippa, he has created compelling and morally complex characters who are both appealing and appalling. The Savage Kind is an exciting and riveting tale told by one of crime fiction’s emerging talents."
"Clever girls with dark leanings... powerful DC families hiding dangerous secrets... The Savage Kind is a new take on femme fatales in a dazzling 1940s noir wrapper. Copenhaver will have you guessing till the very last page."
"John Copenhaver’s dark sparkler of second novel, The Savage Kind, tantalizes from its first pages. With rich period detail and a sneaky subversion of storied noir tropes, it brings to life the delicious intricacies of teen female friendship and the slippery line between identification and desire, between desire and desperation."
"John Copenhaver has managed to unmask one of literature’s most elusive and underrepresented psyches: the evolving teenage girl. While fictional young women are often presented as harmless caricature, Copenhaver’s dual heroines crackle with a burgeoning anger and sense of self. As with other unreliable narrators – Humbert Humbert in Lolita; Mary Katherine in We Have Always Lived in the Castle – warning signs are dropped early that you should not be taken in, that you should keep your guard up. The story is so alluring that you soon forget the warning signs and plunge headlong into the thicket."
