Twisted Summer

Willo Davis Roberts, a prolific author of young adult fiction, published the Edgar Award-winning mystery novel, Twisted Summer, in 1998. Told from the first person perspective of a teen whose summer lakeside community is disrupted by a horrible murder and the conviction of an innocent, the novel follows the protagonist’s efforts to piece together what really happened. Peopled with enough characters to create numerous red herrings and possible suspects, each of the novel’s chapters ends on a cliffhanger that seems to be about to reveal the answer to the mystery.

Fourteen-year-old Cici Linden has spent every summer visiting her grandmother and step-grandfather, aunts, uncles, and cousins at Crystal Lake, a gated vacation community in Michigan. Last summer, her family had to miss this annual tradition because her dad’s work sent him on a big business trip to Hawaii, and he took the whole family with him. This summer, Cici is excited to return to Crystal Lake because this might be the year when she will finally be seen as old enough to be one of the “big kids” group at the lake. Not only that, but her crush, Jack Shurik, lives at the lake year round, and she can’t wait to spend the summer with him again.

However, something feels different when she and her family arrive at Crystal Lake. Jack is nowhere to be seen, and the mood is subdued. After searching out Jack and his mother at their cabin, Cici learns the horrible news: the previous summer, the fun-loving, older girl Zoe Cyrek was murdered in one of the lake cabins. Even more horribly, Jack’s older brother, Brody, has been tried and convicted for the murder, and is now in prison serving a twenty-five-year sentence. Brody’s family believes that he is innocent and has been wrongfully convicted – and Cici agrees. She has known Brody since she was a little girl, and he couldn’t hurt a fly. Moreover, the evidence on which he was convicted was purely circumstantial – his wallet was found at the scene.



Cici’s life is suddenly upended when her beloved grandmother becomes ill and passes away. While Cici’s step-grandfather, called the Judge, is arranging for the funeral, Cici accidentally discovers something very suspicious on his desk. While looking for a pencil, she sees a collection of monthly checks made out to cash that aren’t filed with the rest of the bills. She wonders whether these checks are to someone who is blackmailing the Judge, a theory that is confirmed when she picks up the phone one day and an angry man’s voice, assuming that she is the Judge, warns him not to forget.

Worried that her step-grandfather is somehow involved in Zoe’s death, Cici decides to investigate what happened to find the real killer. She realizes that since the community’s fence was locked at the time of the murder, only someone who was in Crystal Lake that night could have committed the murder. So she writes down a list of every person who was at the lake the previous summer, even people she doesn’t actually think could have done it. However, when she accidentally leaves the list where others can find it, someone sees it and throws it away.

Cici confides in Jack about her ongoing investigation, expecting him to be excited that someone is trying to exonerate his brother. However, Jack doesn’t want Cici to get involved, warning her to watch her back and to stay out of trouble. Just as Jack predicted, when Cici is out gathering clues in the woods by herself one day, someone shoots a warning shot at her that only misses her head by a few inches. Scared but not daunted, she perseveres.



In the middle of the summer, Cici’s parents have to go back to their home for a few days, leaving Cici and her sister with the rest of their extended family at the lake house. Unable to warn them of her suspicions about the Judge before they leave, Cici nervously stays awake during the night. When she hears strange noises in the middle of the night, she decides to see what is going on.

She realizes that the Judge is sneaking out of the house to go somewhere, so Cici follows him out through the woods towards the cabin where Zoe was killed. There, she overhears him talking to a strange man about Zoe’s death and the need to frame Brody for the murder. Just as she is about to reveal herself, the Judge sneaks up behind her and pushes her into the cabin, telling her to be quiet in order to be safe. Cici sneezes and is found.

The man talking to the Judge identifies himself as Carl Trafton, pulls out a gun, and demands that Cici and her step-grandfather get into a boat – he plans to kill them and sink their bodies in the water. Thinking fast, Cici overturns the boat, hiding herself and the Judge just as Jack arrives, holding Trafton at gunpoint and disarming him.



The Judge admits to Cici what has been going on. Several years ago, Cici’s grandmother Molly accidentally hit a man with her car while driving home. Rather than checking on the man, she fled the scene in fear. When she told the Judge what had happened, he went back to the scene of the accident intending to cover up Molly’s involvement so that she wouldn’t go to jail. The man she hit was Trafton, who agreed to keep the whole thing quiet in exchange for monthly payments.

This blackmail system was working fine until Zoe figured out that Trafton was doing to the Judge and decided to get a cut of the money herself. Furious that he would now have two blackmailers, the Judge cornered Zoe in the cabin that night and shook her in anger until she fainted. After he left, Trafton, who had been eavesdropping on the conversation and realized that he would have a competing blackmailer, went into the cabin and strangled Zoe to death. Zoe’s brothers found her that morning, along with Brody’s wallet, which he had left in the cabin a few nights earlier.