The police rush in or the folks from the mental hospital emerge to cart away the villain to just rewards. While bad things do happen to good people, worse things happen to bad people. These books usually end with the main character saying something like The horror is over, signifying a return to normalcy. Unless there s a sequel if so, then right after that line is spoken, the phone rings. Almost all of these books involve one or more of the kids having a secret.
Few things are as quintessentially teenage as the notion of secrets.
Teenagers are developing private lives away from their parents, lives they feel they can t share with everyone. So issues like trust and betrayal figure heavily in these books, just as they do in real YA life. The YA mysteries of Lois Duncan and Joan Lowery Nixon also fit the bill, including the use of the supernatural. It is interesting that Dell re-released Duncan and Nixon s mysteries as thrillers with new cover art and new blurbs. Nixon s books, in particular, sound like YA thrillers, with titles like The Stalker and The Seance .