{"id":840,"date":"2016-04-21T19:10:14","date_gmt":"2016-04-21T19:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chimneyrabbit.com\/?p=840"},"modified":"2016-04-21T19:10:14","modified_gmt":"2016-04-21T19:10:14","slug":"review-mystery-mayhem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/?p=840","title":{"rendered":"Review: Mystery & Mayhem"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mystery<\/a><\/p>\n

Mystery & Mayhem<\/a>, from Egmont Publishing, is a collection of twelve short stories featuring sabotage, missing dogs, purloined jewels – and murder<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I like a good mystery. My first book,\u00a0The Wreck of the Argyll<\/em>, is often described as a “WWI spy thriller”, but for me it’s just as much a mystery, with my plucky young Dundonian detectives Nancy Caird and Jamie Balfour trying to get to the bottom of the enigma of Mr Simpson and his night-time perambulations. The (probably never-to-be-published) sequel,\u00a0Murder at Eaglecrest<\/em>, takes this a lot further – it begins with Nancy and Jamie attempting to solve a locked-room murder at a country house (before ending up in a\u00a0WWI submarine chase involving deadly spies).<\/p>\n

So this collection is right up my street, and features lots of writers I already follow – and indeed, have already included on my\u00a0blog, like Caroline Lawrence<\/a>, Katherine Woodfine<\/a> and Robin Stevens<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The twelve stories are divided into four sections – Impossible Mysteries<\/em> (locked-room cases, one of my favourite types of mystery), Canine Capers<\/em> (involving dogs in the great tradition of Conan Doyle, whose monstrous hounds and\u00a0curious incidents of dogs in the night-time provide inspiration), Poison Plots<\/em> (involving a diverse array of poison-related cases), and Closed-System Crimes<\/em> (where no-one but a limited selection\u00a0of\u00a0suspects can get in or out to commit the dastardly deed).<\/p>\n

The settings range from the late 18th century through Victorian times, right up to the present day. We even have a trip to an alternative world where monsters are real courtesy of Julia Golding’s story about Mel Foster and the Monster Resistance. One thing remains constant across all the stories – the kids are smart, determined, and brave, and solve the crimes before the adults can.\u00a0I approve!<\/p>\n

Every story is worth reading, but if I had to pick out some stand-outs, I’d choose\u00a0Mel Foster and the Hound of the Baskervilles<\/em> by Julia Golding, purely because the inclusion of monsters in this resolutely real world-based anthology came as such a pleasant surprise;\u00a0God’s Eye<\/em> by Frances Hardinge for the depiction of London from the air (every time I read Ms Hardinge I despair for the leaden nature of my own prose); and\u00a0Safe-Keeping<\/em> by Sally Nicholls for the brilliantly engaging voice of her narrator Stanley. But they’re all great. Robin Stevens’ first foray away from posh 1930s girl detectives is worthy of Agatha Christie; Caroline Lawrence’s trip across the Atlantic for her cowboy-influenced tale provides a counterweight to the Eurocentric (and primarily British) setting for the rest of the volume; and Katherine Woodfine’s story of Lil from The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow<\/em> and The Mystery of the Jewelled Moth<\/em> will delight anyone who’s read those books.<\/p>\n

There’s a lot of fun to be had trying to guess the solution to the mysteries before the kid detectives do; I wasn’t keeping score, so I don’t need to embarrass myself by telling you how many I got right. Let’s just say I got\u00a0some of them, but nowhere near all of them – this is a devious collection of authors!<\/p>\n

So if you like a good mystery, here are twelve of the best.<\/p>\n

Review copy of Mystery & Mayhem provided by Egmont through NetGalley.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mystery & Mayhem, from Egmont Publishing, is a collection of twelve short stories featuring sabotage, missing dogs, purloined jewels – and murder. I like a good mystery. My first book,\u00a0The Wreck of the Argyll, is often described as a “WWI spy thriller”, but for me it’s just as much a mystery, with my plucky young… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":844,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Review: Mystery & Mayhem from @EMTeenFiction","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Mystery-and-Mayhem-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p37h7H-dy","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=840"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":846,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840\/revisions\/846"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}