‘A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder’ Puts a Teen on the Case

What teen girl doesn’t dream of solving her first murder? Of lovingly assembling her first crazy wall, sagely taping up photos of neighborhood murder-types in her bedroom? Of sleepovers that become interrogations? Of high-stress shenanigans that give way to romantic interludes, buoyant in a sea of independence? On “A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder,” which arrives Thursday, on Netflix, the true investigation is into oneself.

“Good Girl’s Guide,” based on the book series by Holly Jackson, follows Pip (Emma Myers, who plays Enid in “Wednesday”) and her pet obsession with a crime that happened five years ago — an apparent murder-suicide, though she’s not so sure. She still has vivid daydreams of the dead girl, of the seemingly doting boyfriend, of herself as a little(r) girl with a glancing connection to the older teenagers. Pip decides to combine her passions for academic achievement and for not letting things go and turn this investigation into a major school project.

“I think sometimes I get fixated on something, and I can’t think of anything else … even things I care about the most,” she tells her bestie. Pip’s single-mindedness is a blessing and a curse, and while that’s a pretty played-out type of character on adult murder shows, it feels more appropriate here for a teen finding her way.

The real intrigue of “Good Girl’s Guide” is not its mystery, really, but how much Pip truly does grow and change before our very eyes. She is seemingly approaching high school graduation, but in many scenes she could pass for 12; seeing her behind the wheel of a car genuinely startled me. Her quest to solve the case puts her in a lot of dicey scenarios — seedy, yeah, but also just too grown-up, and Myers’s luminous performance beautifully and poignantly synthesizes this blend of panic, regret, embarrassment, determination, courage, fear and stubbornness.

Coming-of-age stories often use road trips as the mechanism of and the yardstick for maturing, and this often feels like a road-trip saga, only with suspects instead of pit stops. Pip is a late bloomer who feels left out of her friends’ crush chats, and she isn’t always aware of the obvious-to-others lurking sexual menace. Her pursuits cause her to grow and to grow up, not through miserable loss-of-innocence tragedies but rather through navigating the unfamiliar, through discovering what her interests and limits really are.