Witty Little Knitter

I do have an unfortunate problem when it comes to amateur-sleuth mysteries: I do love them but I also like a minimum amount of realism, really only a minimum amount, e.g. when it comes to the investigations of the sleuth vs. those of the police. I'd either like to have some reason why the police doesn't mind the sleuth meddling with their investigation (and, no, this doesn't need to be the most convincing reason ever, Carola Dunn basically gives us 'Daisy is good with people and her Scotland Yard-husband occasionally takes advantage of the fact that everybody seems to confide in her and I'm completely happy with that), the police is for some reason unable to investigate (hey there remote cottages, cut of from the outside world) or the police is prejudiced and too stupid to catch the real killer (though I'm not the biggest fan of those either but that's another topic). I do not like sleuths who keep information from the police for no good reason and Ingrid doesn't really have any good reasons for not telling the police that she was the last person to see the murder-victim alive. Yes, it would mean admitting that she had lied to their parents but that doesn't seem like a terrible big deal considering all the circumstances. It might seem like that for the 13 year old Ingrid is supposed to be but apart from her incredible stupidity in that aspect she never acts like a 13 year old. She always seems much more mature in every aspect that I simply couldn't belive how she did never realise that continuing with the (growing number of) lies would have much worse consequences than admitting to having been quite stupid for a while. Instead she decided to do more and more stupid things on every single page till I wished that in the end everything would come out so that her parents would ground her till she turns 18. Conveniently that never happens, she just tells the sheriff who promises not to tell and we'll just have to assume that her parents didn't question who Ingrid ended up with a murderer in the middle of the night. It also felt quite often as if her actions had the worst possible consequences abut nd then no consequences at all (e.g. she pretends to be sick so that she can do some sleuthing instead on that day, the sheriff sees her, she lies and claims she's working on a school-project, sheriff tells his son who's in school with Ingrid, son asks Ingrid about that project and then...nada. Ingrid is telling more and more lies but instead of getting trapped in her own web when people catch her telling a lie she just smiles and stutters a bit and then everbody seems to loose interest in her)Apart from all the I found the mistery quite predictable. I figured out who the bad guy was, when he appeared the second time. I didn't get everything 100% right but it was close enough. The mystery itself could also have been told on about 150 pages less but it got padded with narration about Ingrid's parents, her brother, school, soccer, theatre, dogs...I mean I get that a YA-novel needs some of that but it feels like it includes every single stock YA-character:- well-meaning but overprotective mother- well-meaning but over-ambitous and often absent father- football-player big brother- evil math-teacher- evil soccer-coach- rich bitch classmate- crazy grandpa- best friend with divorced parents (who stayed totally colourless)- first crush (see above)And none of the characters developed any depth. Perhaps not quite as many and instead developed those more.