Dirty Laundry, by Daniel Ehrenhaft
Ehrenhaft, Daniel (2008). Dirty Laundry. NY: Harper Teen. 240 pages.
How weird is this: this book–a semi-mystery by Edgar winning author Daniel Ehrenhaft (who wrote his Edgar honored series “The Wessex Papers” under the nom de plume Daniel Parker)–has almost the exact same cover as Daniel Waters’ Generation Dead. The hardcover jackets of both novels feature photographs of girls in short skirts (in GD, the girl is wearing a cheerleading uniform, in DL, the girl is wearing a plaid skirt) reclining on benches. While the face of the girl on the cover of GD is turned to the camera and positioned on the far right side of the frame, the face of the girl on the cover of DL is not visible, but is cropped from the left side of the frame. Could this be the beginning of a new cropped girl body trend in YA cover art?
Sadly enough, the cover of Ehrenhaft’s novel is one of the most interesting things about this just too clever book. While, true, the novel is set at a boarding school, where fictional characters tend to get off on cleverness, Dirty Laundry, set at a boarding school for misfits (the metaphoric “dirty laundry” of other schools), is a bit over the top. The story: told in the alternating first person voices of Carli and Fun (the nickname of Fellini Udall Newport), the novel describes semi-famous teen actress Carli’s arrival at Fun’s boarding school, where she intends to research a part in an upcoming TV show produced by Fun’s father. When Carli arrives, Fun and his roommate Nails are perplexed by the disappearance of Nails’ ex-girlfriend Darcy, one of the school’s few golden girls. Carli, creeped out by the disappearance, teams up with Fun to figure out what happened to the girl last seen at the school’s laundry facility.
Ostensibly a mystery, the narrative is so filled with the characters’ clever witticisms and outdated (for the characters, though not, perhaps for the author) pop-culture tinged asides that, by the time the mystery of Darcy’s disappearance is actually solved, I didn’t really care all that much. Which is a good thing, since the motivation for the crime was very weak.
The first third of the book, when Fun and Carli were getting to know each other, was somewhat fun to read and almost captured a Moonlighting-esque banter between the characters. This banter grew tiring, however, and, when the mystery didn’t really get off the ground (I kept wondering why I was supposed to care about Darcy anyway), this patter grew a bit old. I might try to read “The Wessex Papers” anyway, because I generally trust the Edgar award and because I like mysteries. I’ll let you know if my faith in the Mystery Writers of America’s award proves unshaken.