Skip to main content

Murder is Bad Manners

By
                                                       Cover image for Murder is bad manners : a Wells & Wong mystery

Murder is Bad Manners
by Robin Stevens
Simon & Schuster, 2014.  307 pgs.  Mystery

     First in the new Wells & Wong mystery series, Murder is Bad Manners is set in an English boarding school in 1934, where Daisy Wells, the blonde-haired darling of teachers and students takes up with Hazel Wong, a Chinese student from Hong Kong, to form a Detective Society of which she is the president and Hazel is the secretary. The Detective Society doesn't have a lot to investigate until Hazel finds the body of Miss Bell, the English instructor, on the gym floor.  She runs for help, but when she gets back, the body is gone. The teachers are upset and dismissive. Only Daisy believes Hazel, and their efforts to find out what happened to the body will take them into the lives of the faculty members until one of them is killed as the girls get too close to the truth. Murder is Bad Manners is interesting on several levels. One is a little surprised that a Chinese girl would be as readily accepted in 1930s Great Britain as Hazel is, but, in fact, Daisy treats her with some condescension through most of the book until Hazel sticks up for herself. The time and place of the narrative set the novel firmly in the British cozy tradition which makes the book a comfortable place to spend some quality time.  Fifth and sixth grade mystery lovers should really go for this one.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: The Factory

By
The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall

By
A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall By Jasmine Warga New York: Harper, 2024. Fiction. 211 pages. A painting has been stolen from the Penelope L. Brooks Museum and sixth-grader Rami Ahmed is worried he's the main suspect. His mother works at the museum as the lead custodian and Rami spends a lot of time hanging out at the museum while she works. On the day the painting went missing, the only people there were the security guard Ed, the cleaning crew, and Rami. Then, a mysterious girl appears in the museum. She floats around from room to room and only Rami can see her -- and she looks exactly like the girl from the missing painting. To prove his innocence and help figure out who the floating girl is, Rami partners up with an aspiring sleuth at school named Veda and the two dive into unexpected situations as they try to solve the mystery. This is a cozy mystery that is focused mostly on characters and ambiance and only a little on the mystery itself. Don't read this book if yo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Faker

By
Faker By Gordon Korman New York: Scholastic Press, 2024. Fiction. 214 pages. 12-year-old Trey is used to starting over at a new school -- he has the routine perfectly memorized: make new friends, introduce his dad to the wealthy parents of his new friends, and "Houdini" themselves out of there before they get caught running their latest scam. Trey's dad is a master con artist, and Trey has just been promoted to full-partner. Their new scheme for the next big score brings them to the affluent suburb of Boxelder, TN where Trey's dad has cooked up a fake electric car company for investors to buy into. The only problem is that Trey is starting to grow tired of moving around and never putting down roots, especially after forming a fast friendship with Logan and developing a crush on Kaylee, a socially conscious girl in his class. As Trey longs for a normal life, is there any way he can convince his dad to get out of the family business? Gordon Korman is a perennial favorit...
Post a Comment
Read more