Once a year, I read Ellen Raskin’s The Westing Game, because its twisty, weird plot about a pair of sisters and the other occupants of their strange lakeside apartment block. It sucked me in when I read it for the first time as a kid and it has influenced all my novels in some small way.

It took me a while to really understand how much I loved the mystery, because I was so captivated by the lead character of Turtle Wexler. She was a 13-year-old protagonist, but she wasn’t pretty or popular or a mean girl. She was something entirely different. She’s not shy, she’s not timid, she’s bold and curious and far more interested in defining other people than in being defined by them.

I wanted to be like Turtle Wexler. Gradually, as I followed Turtle and her avid sleuthing, I started to see how clever Raskin was in her plotting. The game of the title is an elaborate puzzle filled with wordplay, but with a glorious plan behind it that makes it less whimsical and more diabolical. An eccentric millionaire has died and left his fortune to two of his 16 relatives, organised by him into eight mismatched and fractious pairs. The pair that uncovers his killer will win both his money and control of his company.

So far, so good, and I don’t want to spoil the book for anyone who hasn’t read it yet. Although it is supposed to be a YA novel, reading The Westing Game felt, to me, like the most adult experience I’d had as a reader up to that point. I’ve learned a lot about Raskin over the years, including the fact that she started out as an illustrator, which makes sense given the terrific descriptions of the characters. But I think the thing that impresses me most is how she has said she didn’t know the outcome until she wrote the final pages. In a sense, reader and writer are figuring things out together, which is why I think there’s such a grown-up feeling. The author wasn’t pedantically planting clues for readers to pick up; she was really following the storyline.

I love the book too much to ever try to rewrite it, or write my own version, but you can be sure that Gone Girl bears its influence. “Amazing” Amy’s love of riddles and wordplay would make her a worthy adversary for Turtle.

Speaking of Amy, many readers now know that her fate is quite different from what they might have imagined. That’s another idea I gleaned from Raskin’s plot. Not only do things occur that are bittersweet, but things are mentioned that take place far into the characters’ futures.

Unfortunately for all of us, Ellen Raskin’s future wasn’t a long one. She died in 1984, and I wish we had more of her books to read and love and change us. But I hope that in sharing my well-honed obsession with The Westing Game I’ll encourage someone else to make it an annual read.

The Books That Changed My Life is edited by Bethanne Patrick and published this month by Regan Arts.