The Westing Game Summary

The Westing Game is a murder-mystery novel set in Wisconsin during the 1970s. A mysterious realtor arranges for a specific group of people to become tenants in an apartment building called Sunset Towers that overlooks the abandoned mansion of Samuel Westing. A diverse group of unconnected people, both families and individuals, live together in at the Sunset Towers until a young girl, Turtle, discovers the body of Sam Westing after entering the Westing mansion on a dare. After his body is discovered, the tenants learn that each of them is considered heirs to the Westing fortune and are invited to the mansion to hear the will. Sam Westing's will claims that one of them is the murderer and divides them up into pairs and gives them each clues to solve the mystery of who killed him. The winner will receive 200 million dollars. At first, the pairs do not work well together, but eventually each of them brings out the best in each other and the Sunset Towers tenants begin to work together to create a community and solve the mystery, even in the face of adversity when a mysterious bomber begins to terrorize the apartment building. Eventually, Turtle discovers the truth: Sam Westing is alive and is using the game to vindicate himself from the mistakes of his past by ensuring that each of the heirs can have a better life than they originally had. Turtle ends up discovering that Sam Westing has been disgusting himself as various members of the community, each with one of the four directions in his name: North, South, East, and West.