Reading: Cream Buns and Crime
Aug. 5th, 2018 07:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
white_hartCream Buns and Crime is a collection of short stories linked to Robin Stevens' Murder Most Unladylike series, interspersed with short factual sections about the detective genre, how to be a detective, recipes encountered in the series, and so on. Obviously, most of the extra features are aimed at Stevens' core pre-teen readership, but while I wasn't very interested in how to make invisible ink or take fingerprints I did like the overview of Golden Age detective fiction and Stevens' self-assessment against Ronald Knox's rules of detective fiction (she follows most of them, apart from the one about not having Chinese characters and the one about making the sidekick stupid), and I enjoyed the stories a lot.
There are five stories in the collection. There are three Deepdean School-set mysteries, 'The Case of Lavinia's Missing Tie' (the first case the Detective Society ever solved) and 'The Case of the Blue Violet' and 'The Case of the Deepdean Vampire' (which were both previously published as Kindle singles) which are particularly notable for being narrated by Daisy instead of Hazel. I enjoyed the change of viewpoint, though Daisy's arrogance is best in small doses and I'm glad that Hazel narrates the full-length novels. The other two stories feature other characters from the series: 'The Secret of Weston School' is an adventure featuring Alexander and George, the Junior Pinkertons, and 'The Case of the Missing Bunbreak' is a Christmas holiday mystery narrated by Hazel and Daisy's friend Beanie.
Like all the Murder Most Unladylike books, this is charming and fun to read, and the content that was obviously aimed at younger readers had me trying to remember how old my nieces are and work out whether they would be ready for the series yet (not quite, I think).
There are five stories in the collection. There are three Deepdean School-set mysteries, 'The Case of Lavinia's Missing Tie' (the first case the Detective Society ever solved) and 'The Case of the Blue Violet' and 'The Case of the Deepdean Vampire' (which were both previously published as Kindle singles) which are particularly notable for being narrated by Daisy instead of Hazel. I enjoyed the change of viewpoint, though Daisy's arrogance is best in small doses and I'm glad that Hazel narrates the full-length novels. The other two stories feature other characters from the series: 'The Secret of Weston School' is an adventure featuring Alexander and George, the Junior Pinkertons, and 'The Case of the Missing Bunbreak' is a Christmas holiday mystery narrated by Hazel and Daisy's friend Beanie.
Like all the Murder Most Unladylike books, this is charming and fun to read, and the content that was obviously aimed at younger readers had me trying to remember how old my nieces are and work out whether they would be ready for the series yet (not quite, I think).
