A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

Pip tells Sal's brother she'll prove his innocence

Five years ago in Fairview, Connecticut, seventeen-year-old Andie Bell vanished.

Pip tells Sal's brother she'll prove his innocence

Five years ago in Fairview, Connecticut, seventeen-year-old Andie Bell vanished. Her boyfriend Sal Singh became the prime suspect after his friends recanted his alibi, Andie's blood appeared under his fingernails, and he was found dead in the woods—apparent suicide with her phone in his pocket. Case closed, no trial. But Pip Fitz-Amobi, now seventeen herself, never accepted the verdict. Sal once gave her a KitKat and taught her how to handle bullies when she was small; his laugh made entire rooms brighter. For her senior capstone project, she walks to the most feared front door in town and tells his younger brother Ravi she intends to prove Sal's innocence. Ravi, weathered by five years as a murderer's sibling, lets her in for an interview—barely believing she's real.

A dead boy's texts reveal cracks in the official story

After Pip defends Ravi from a hostile store cashier—and gets told he doesn't need some kid fighting his battles—she thinks she's burned the bridge. Days later he appears at her door to apologize, and they walk her golden retriever through the very woods where Sal was found. Ravi reveals he tried to investigate three years ago but was shut down at every turn. He proposes a deal: let him in as a partner, and in return he'll bring Sal's old phone. Together they discover Sal called Andie 112 times after she vanished, that his supposed confession text contains punctuation Sal never used, and that two days before Andie disappeared, Sal noted a mysterious license plate in his phone. Their partnership is sealed with a handshake Ravi forgets to shake.

A secret older man, a father's affair, a bully's mask

Pip peels back layers through interviews with Andie's former friends and an old confidante of Becca, Andie's younger sister. She learns Jason Bell emotionally abused his family, mocking his daughters' looks and pitting them against each other. Catfishing one friend by text—pretending to be the other—Pip extracts two revelations: Andie was secretly seeing an older man she boasted of being able to ruin, and she knew about her father's affair. A witness spotted Andie and Max Hastings looking intimate at a house party, contradicting Max's claim they barely knew each other. Most disturbingly, Becca vanished during that same party and later needed the morning-after pill but refused to say what happened. The perfect victim is dissolving, replaced by a girl with dangerous secrets and enemies to match.