A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

As Pip Fitz-Amobi digs deeper into her supposedly academic project reinvestigating the five-year-old murder of Andie Bell, the danger around her escalates. Someone leaves her a note warning her to stop digging, she receives a string of threatening anonymous texts, and her dog Barney is stolen and drowned. Along the way, working with Sal Singh's younger brother Ravi, Pip uncovers that Andie had secretly been selling drugs to classmates, including Sal's friend Max Hastings, and that Andie had also been involved with Elliot Ward, a history teacher at Pip's school and the father of her best friend, Cara.

The true sequence of events emerges: Elliot Ward, in a moment of fury, shoved Andie, and believing he had killed her, panicked. To cover his tracks, he murdered Sal and staged it to look like a guilty suicide, planting a fake confession text to close the case. In the days that followed, Ward spotted a girl named Isla on the street, mistook her for Andie who he believed he had disposed of, and abducted her, keeping her locked in his attic for years.

The actual cause of Andie's death is revealed through Becca Bell, Andie's sister. Becca had been drugged with Rohypnol and raped by Max Hastings, using pills Andie herself had supplied him. In a rage over this betrayal, Becca pushed Andie, who fell, convulsed, and died. In shock, Becca hid the body in an old septic tank at a nearby farmhouse and later admits she was the one sending Pip the threatening texts, while the original warning note had come from Ward. When Pip confronts Becca directly, Becca drugs her and tries to strangle her to death, and Pip is only saved when Ravi intervenes in time.

With the truth finally exposed, Sal Singh is publicly and posthumously cleared of Andie's murder. Elliot Ward and Becca Bell are arrested for their roles in the deaths of Andie and Sal, and Max Hastings is charged with rape, including the assault on Becca. Isla is freed from captivity. Pip's project becomes the vehicle through which the real story comes out, and the book closes with her having exposed the truth at enormous personal risk, her bond with Ravi solidified through the ordeal.