Agatha Oddly – The Secret Key

Lena Jones's The Secret Key is the first Agatha Oddly mystery, a stylish London detective story for 11 year olds about a girl who has been waiting her whole life for a real case.

What happens

Agatha Oddlow is thirteen, on a scholarship at a posh school where she doesn't fit, and in trouble for the thirteenth time this term. Her latest offence? Dressing up as a health inspector to investigate the caretaker.

She lives with her dad, the head warden of Hyde Park, in a cottage right inside the park. Her attic bedroom is stuffed with vintage clothes, vinyl, a bust of Queen Victoria she found in a skip and every Agatha Christie ever written. Her mum named her after the great writer, and loved setting her trails of clues.

When Agatha's bored, she "Changes Channel". Hercule Poirot himself steps out of the headmaster's shiny desk to bet her how long the lecture will last (she wins, obviously).

Then, one morning on her way through the park, a motorbike tears down the footpath and knocks over an old lady. The rider doesn't stop. The woman has an expensive perfume, a business card from the Royal Geographical Society and a strange tattoo of a key on her wrist. She's holding a folded page of the Financial Times. Agatha is quite sure this was no accident.

So she does what any self-respecting detective would. She escapes from school inside a wheelie bin (under a bag of potato peelings).

Agatha is a joy to spend time with. She's clever, confident and a tiny bit ridiculous. She's also very lonely underneath it all. Her best friend Liam is lovely, patient and a computer genius. The three snooty girls who make her life a misery are just as horrible as you'd hope.

Agatha's mum died in a bike accident before the story starts, which is good to know before you begin. She still talks to her at night and keeps twenty-two red notebooks about her so she won't forget anything. Agatha doesn't believe the accident was what the police said it was. It's handled gently, but it's there under everything.

If your reader knows their Poirot from their Miss Marple, or would love a heroine who wears a red beret to school, they'll adore this.

What to read next

For another girl who's decided she's a detective and needs a proper murder to prove it, try Murder Most Unladylike. Daisy and Hazel have set up their own secret detective society at their boarding school, and then Hazel finds a body.