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Our daughter has a game at school-though she would say it’s totally serious-where she’s started a detective agency. To the casual observer, it would seem like a complex storyline: she’s recruited other classmates who have code words and secret handshakes, she has plans to recruit agents in other schools, and there is even a rival detective agency with double agents.
But my daughter sighs and says the agency hasn’t really gotten off the ground yet. “We need a murder, a theft, or a poisoning.”
Thanks, Robin Stevens.
I don’t remember how I first learned of the middle-grade mystery series (published in the United Kingdom as the Murder Most Unladylike series), but the books have become favorites in our house; I’ve checked them out for my personal reading when one needs to go back to the library before I can get to it, and we’ve purchased the UK books that haven’t made it to the US yet. They’ve spawned a strong love for the whole genre in my daughter, and we now prioritize mysteries when putting books on hold at the library.
While these mysteries are slotted at the middle-grade reading level, they’re not “kid mysteries” in the sense of being silly or low-stakes; think Agatha Christie (a clear influence) and not Encyclopedia Brown. Each book features a murder (or more), and the two girl protagonists…
