The Secret of the Night Train

Sylvia Bishop's The Secret of the Night Train is a cosy mystery for 10 year olds about a girl crossing Europe by train with a stolen diamond somewhere on board.

What happens

Max Morel lives in Paris and has never been out of France. Her house is so quiet and same-every-day that she does her thinking in the attic. Then a great-aunt she barely knows phones from Istanbul, ill and needing company.

Everyone else in the family is far too busy. So Max volunteers, and somehow she's allowed! Four trains, two of them overnight, all the way to Istanbul.

Her chaperone is Sister Marguerite. She's a chess-playing nun who keeps pulling things out of her habit (jelly beans, superglue, a pot plant). The story tells you not to bother asking "why?" about her, and it's right.

Just before they leave, a famous red-and-white diamond goes missing from a Paris vault. The police search their train before it sets off. Max, armed with her notebook, decides they haven't looked hard enough.

So she starts a suspect list. A young man with snapped glasses who missed the search. A fur-wrapped lady with a voice like a foghorn. Her enormous nephew, who looks terrifying and then cheerfully makes the nun's bed for her. Who would you put at the top?

It's a lovely, gentle read. The narrator chats to you directly, and there are little jokes all the way through (Marguerite calls people "my cabbage" and "my chicken", which apparently is nice in French).

There's a quieter thread too. Max is homesick before she's even left, and it sits in her tummy like a knot. Detecting is how she copes. Marguerite has her own trick for it, and it's a very sweet moment when she shares it.

Anyone who's ever felt wobbly about going somewhere new will find Max very familiar. And if they love a mystery, there's plenty to puzzle over.

What to read next

Liked the trains as much as the clues? The Highland Falcon Thief puts a boy who'd much rather stay at home on a long steam-train trip, with a jewel thief in the newspaper headlines before he's even boarded.