The most famous literary detective of all time, Sherlock Holmes, was first introduced to the public eye by Scottish author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1892. In Truly Devious, Johnson introduces two characters born a century apart: Dottie Epstein and Stevie Bell. Despite the 100-year gap between them, they both have a deep love for Sherlock and the spirit of the detective genre. While Truly Devious is an homage to this classical style of detective fiction, the novel also highlights the modern-day subgenre of true crime and how the two styles blend and influence one another over time. Truly Devious is a story written not only for modern lovers of true crime but for those who crave the same mystery and riddle-inspired tales of 100 years ago.

With the introduction of American author Agatha Christie’s detective Hercule Poirot in 1920, the “Golden Age of Detective Fiction” arrived in America and lasted until 1939. Maureen Johnson uses this time in history as the backdrop for her 1936 flashbacks in Truly Devious. Detective fiction like Christie’s featured a wide cast of characters and a puzzle to be solved to bring the criminal to justice, and during a time of low morale country-wide, mysteries offered a chance to lose oneself in a compelling riddle.