Confessions Books In Order
Book links take you to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn money from qualifying purchases.Publication Order of Confessions Books
Confessions of a Murder Suspect | (2012) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Private School Murders | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Paris Mysteries | (2014) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Murder of an Angel | (2015) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Confessions is a series of Young Adult Mystery novels written by James Patterson. The books follow the exploits of a young girl who must unravel the secrets of her deranged family.
+The Story
The Confessions series began publication in 2012 with ‘Confessions of a Murder Suspect’. The book introduced readers to Tandy Angel, a sixteen-year-old girl with a problem on her hands.
Her parents, Malcolm and Maud, have been murdered. Any other child would be too busy mourning such a tragedy to worry about much else. But Tandy isn’t like most children. And neither are her siblings.
The children were the last people to see their parents alive, a fact that makes them persons of interest in the investigation launched by the police. Even with this unexpected turn of events, Tandy shouldn’t have had much reason to put her own mind to the task of solving her parents’ murder.
But Tandy Angel’s life was hardly a happy one. To prying eyes, her parents were just savage perfections that pushed their children to excel in all fields. And Tandy had no reason to doubt that narrative.
But then they died and she realized that she could not trust anyone, not even herself. As it turns out, Tandy had been the subject of intense experimentation at the hands of her parents.
And they had more or less succeeded in turning her into a robotic, emotionless figure of nearly unrivaled intelligence. When Maud and Malcolm Angel are murdered, a dam essentially bursts.
No longer subjected to the nefarious machinations of her family, Tandy begins to emerge. She puts her considerable skills to the task of finding the person who killed her parents, a task that begins to reveal to her dangerous affairs with which her family was involved.
The Confessions series initially follows Tandy around as she attempts to make sense of her family’s history. The girl has to reintegrate back into society, a task that proves easier said than done when she abandons her regiment of pills and begins to contend with the feelings her medication had suppressed for so long.
Over time, it becomes clear that her parents’ experiments did more than simply submerge her emotions. Maud and Malcolm also extinguished chunks of her memories, memories that included the time she spent with a boy she deeply loved.
So Tandy has to go on a journey to put the pieces of her life and her family’s history together. She is joined along the way by Harry and Hugo, her brothers, each of whom is plagued by their own trials and challenges.
The heroine also meets family members along the way that she had no idea existed, some of whom help her whilst others play antagonistic roles.
This is on top of Tandy’s efforts to find the boy in her memories, a boy she knows she cares for but who was taken from her mind via her parents’ experimentation.
While Tandy Angel’s personal situation drives the Confessions series, each book typically features a separate mystery that the heroine attempts to solve whenever she takes a break from her family drama.
Because of her considerable intellect, Tandy finds that she is better equipped than most to solve puzzles and resolve mysteries. So once she finally deals with the death of her parents and rediscovers the true personality hiding beneath her robotic demeanor, Tandy decides to use her talents to tackle the crimes that happen in her vicinity.
It is because of the many cases that Tandy tackles and solves that the confessions series is categorized as YA Mystery.
The Confessions books are written in the first person. Tandy, the primary protagonist, talks directly to the reader, as one would if they were writing a diary. Some audience members have expressed satisfaction with this technique, suggesting that the approach makes James Patterson’s books feel so much more intimate, almost like they are sitting next to Tandy Angel at a campfire, listening to her narrate her life story.
Other readers believe the approach is distracting and that it is merely an excuse that Patterson uses to tell rather than show. These same readers have criticized Tandy for being a weak, whiny, paranoid inconsistent heroine.
+The Author
James Patteson is an American bestselling author whose books have sold hundreds of millions of copies. A diversely skilled writer born to a schoolteacher and a salesman, Patterson attended Vanderbilt University.
He was awarded a scholarship to study English but he never finished his course. He left after a year and found work in advertising as a copywriter. Patterson’s first book was rejected dozens of times before he finally found a publisher who brought it to the literary market, giving Patterson the opportunity to win his first Edgar Award.
+Confessions of a Murder Suspect
The police seem to think that Tandy Angel killed Malcolm and Maud; and if not her, then maybe one of her two siblings. Most children would deny killing their parents. But Tandy isn’t so sure.
She’s always been a little paranoid. But now she isn’t even sure she can trust herself. Malcolm and Maud did not make Tandy’s childhood easy. They held very high standards for the teen, standards for which they punished her whenever she fell short.
So Tandy knows she’s a little damaged. But she doesn’t know if she’s so damaged as to kill her parents. With the police closing in and few answers in her immediate vicinity, Tandy begins to investigate, determining to get to the bottom of her parents’ affairs and their eventual death.
+The Private School Murders
Tandy Angel came to fame when her parents died and she solved their murders. Now Tandy has a taste for investigative work and she has no intention of giving up her amateur sleuthing hat.
Besides, the teen is still occupied by her brother who everyone thinks killed his girlfriend Tandy has refused to accept that narrative and even now, she works to see his name cleared.
Despite the challenges her brother’s case has raised, Tandy still finds the time to investigate the death of a wealthy woman. The woman is not the first victim and from what Tandy can tell, there might be a serial killer on the loose.
The fact one of the recent victim’s went to Tandy’s school tells the teenage sleuth that if she doesn’t find the culprit soon, she just might become his next victim.
Book Series In Order » Characters »