It’s Elementary

It’s Elementary (2024) Elise Bryant (Mavis Miller #1)

The principal has disappeared and the head of the PTA was seen wearing latex gloves, paper booties, and lugging black trash bags into her mini-van in the middle of the night.

Are these things related? Mavis Miller, the newly volun-told head of the PTA DEI committee thinks so.

Mavis is a single mom who lives with her dad, and works at a non-profit where she is underpaid and overworked. But Pearl’s dad isn’t out of the picture–just constantly out of town.

The “Daddy Tracker” is what Pearl calls Find My Phone, the app and website that we use to track where Corey is every night.

One of the things I particularly liked about this story is that Pearl and the other kids are real kids.

(A)ll the time we’ve gained is lost when I can’t find Pearl’s favorite silver-and-black-striped knee socks, just her other silver-and-black-striped knee socks. So I have no choice but to break several traffic laws on the drive to the school, basically drifting in on two wheels, while Pearl stares resentfully at the impostor socks in the back seat.

Yes!” Pearl squeals, her eyes lighting up. “I only did that once before, but then Mommy told me I couldn’t do it again.” She gives me the side-eye, leaning into Jasmine.

I sigh. “That’s because you did it with permanent marker.”

“Can I have some, too?” Langston asks, pulling up his mask.

“Yes, sir,” Jasmine says, twirling her finger at him. “That’s about to bring this whole look together, little man.”

Despite being a cozy mystery, it’s blunt about much of the bullshit that goes on in society.

I open up Outlook, and there’s an email from Rose sitting at the top of my inbox: Can you convert this Word doc into a PDF? I still can’t figure it out, ha ha!

See? Crucial.

I convert the file for her, a thirty-second task that Rose could easily learn herself if she just tried to be a little less helpless…and I stopped indulging her learned helplessness.

DEI means diversity, equity, and inclusion, sure.

But it also means free labor to be given willingly to fix problems that we didn’t create. It means a box checked with no real change made.

Which I appreciated, since as a middle-aged white lady, I can guess at things, but don’t know them.

But you should read this book because it’s a good mystery, and it’s a lot of fun.

I can think of a lot more things I’d rather do in this moment. Get my annual Pap smear. Do my taxes. Clean slime out of a rug. Listen to that song about sharks on repeat for the rest of my life

Characters: Mavis Miller, Pearl, Mr. Miller, Corey, Polly, Langston Hammonds, Anabella Holbrook, River Ackerman, Mason Ackerman, Brody, Sojourner Soso Hart, Trisha Holbrook, Jasmine Hammonds, Leon Hammonds, Corinne Ackerman, Dyvia Mehta, Ruth Gentry, Felicia Barlow, Florence Michaelson, Angela Hart, Charlie Lee, Paul McGee, Jack Cohen, Principal Thomas Smith, Mrs. Smith , Mrs. Nelson, Ms. Castillo, Mrs. Tennison, Mrs. Lilliam, Rose, Nelson

Cover illustration by Camila Pinheiro

Publisher: Berkley

Rating: 9/10

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