A Miss Mallard Mystery – Stairway to Doom

Robert Quackenbush's Stairway to Doom is a Miss Mallard mystery for 5 year olds, with a stormy night, a spooky castle and a will waiting to be read.

What happens

Miss Mallard is a world-famous ducktective (yes, she's a duck). She arrives at Duckinbill Castle in Scotland as the lightning starts, and she tells the thunder off for being so dramatic!

Her nephew, Inspector Willard Widgeon, lets her in. Great Aunt Abby's last living relatives have all been called to the castle. To get their share of it, they have to stay the night. And the will ends with a warning. Beware of Kisscula!

Who's Kisscula? A kisspire, apparently. He hunts for victims to kiss when the moon is full. And ducks REALLY hate being kissed.

Then relatives start going missing. There's ear-piercing quacking at midnight, a page torn out of the family history, a basket of garlic nobody can explain and secret staircases behind the walls. Miss Mallard pulls a torch out of her knitting bag and gets to work.

It's such a fun first mystery for young readers. It's spooky enough to feel exciting (a castle, a storm, a caped figure on the balcony) but nothing ever gets actually frightening. The clues are all there on the page, so a sharp-eyed listener might just solve it before Willard does. Everyone keeps gasping "Horrors!" and "Oh my!", which is very funny read aloud.

The whole thing is over in six short chapters. At the end there's a word list explaining the trickier words, like culprit and inherit, and a few questions to chat about afterwards. Would your reader have been brave enough to spend the night at Duckinbill Castle?

If you've got a reader who's just getting going with chapter books and loves a whodunnit, this is a great one to share.

What to read next

For more of Miss Mallard, try Express Train to Trouble, where a practical joker is driving everyone mad on the Nile Express and a golden mummy case is on board.