Fans will be thrilled and encouraged to go on exploring the worlds of mystery reading—and solving.
Stevens and her fictional characters offer some background to the collection of A Murder Most Unladylike books.
Stevens’ nine-book series is a satisfying and highly successful combination of English boarding-school tales and traditional detective stories, all set in the 1930s. This entertaining companion title includes an invitation to would-be detectives; suggested reading, mostly from the adult world, for mystery aficionados; and four new, interconnected short stories. Readers will encounter instructions on how to set up their own clubs for finding and solving mysteries from Stevens’ characters, including Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong of the Wells & Wong Detective Society (who were first introduced in 2015’s Murder Is Bad Manners), and George Mukherjee and Alexander Arcady of the Junior Pinkertons (the girls’ friends from Weston Boys’ School). The author and her characters take turns narrating the short stories, sharing tips and tricks for detection, and they offer a short history of detective novels. Hazel introduces crime-writing queens Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham; Daisy writes profiles of her 10 favorite fictional detectives, including Inspector Alan Grant, Father Brown, and Nancy Drew; and Stevens shares her favorite mysteries and their influences on the stories she wrote. Readers will also enjoy learning more about spies, codebreaking, and famous unsolved cases and trying the recipes for food mentioned in earlier books. Altogether, this is jolly good fun.
Fans will be thrilled and encouraged to go on exploring the worlds of mystery reading—and solving. (quiz answers, glossary) (Mystery. 10-14)Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9781665919463
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay.
Castle “Ghost” Cranshaw feels like he’s been running ever since his dad pulled that gun on him and his mom—and used it.
His dad’s been in jail three years now, but Ghost still feels the trauma, which is probably at the root of the many “altercations” he gets into at middle school. When he inserts himself into a practice for a local elite track team, the Defenders, he’s fast enough that the hard-as-nails coach decides to put him on the team. Ghost is surprised to find himself caring enough about being on the team that he curbs his behavior to avoid “altercations.” But Ma doesn’t have money to spare on things like fancy running shoes, so Ghost shoplifts a pair that make his feet feel impossibly light—and his conscience correspondingly heavy. Ghost’s narration is candid and colloquial, reminiscent of such original voices as Bud Caldwell and Joey Pigza; his level of self-understanding is both believably childlike and disarming in its perception. He is self-focused enough that secondary characters initially feel one-dimensional, Coach in particular, but as he gets to know them better, so do readers, in a way that unfolds naturally and pleasingly. His three fellow “newbies” on the Defenders await their turns to star in subsequent series outings. Characters are black by default; those few white people in Ghost’s world are described as such.
An endearing protagonist runs the first, fast leg of Reynolds' promising relay. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-5015-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
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SEEN & HEARD
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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