Young Adult Crime Novels

One of the problems with thrillers or crime stories where children or young people are the lead characters is that ingenious methods need to be thought up to explain why adults do not take over the whole investigation. A major part of your skill as a children's author of such plot-driven books will be to come up with plausible reasons why your protagonists do not tell any adults what is going on, and concocting events that are viable and reasonable in a world fraught with "stranger dangers." [Nancy Drew type books weren't believable then, and are almost impossible to pull off today. In other words, there is no longer a place for this genre.]

Allan Frewin Jones and Lesley Pollinger, Writing for Children, 1996