Alice-Miranda At Sea

Jacqueline Harvey's Alice-Miranda At Sea is a jolly mystery for 9 year olds set on the Queen's own ship, sailing out of Barcelona for a wedding.

What happens

Alice-Miranda's Aunt Charlotte is marrying the film star Lawrence Ridley, and the ceremony is going to happen at sea. Aunty Gee (who happens to be Queen Georgiana) has lent them her ship for the voyage. Nearly three hundred guests are on board, and that includes Alice-Miranda's best friends Millie and Jacinta.

Alice-Miranda is exactly as you'd hope. She insists on shaking hands with every single member of the crew and introducing herself by her full name, which takes a while when you're Alice-Miranda Highton-Smith-Kennington-Jones!

Something's a bit off from the start, though. The royal flag goes missing and turns up hidden in a steward's locker. The doctor on board doesn't like children one bit. And a nervous boy called Neville slips on board with a trumpet case by pretending that a glamorous stranger in a huge hat is his mum.

That stranger turns out to be Jacinta's mother, who Jacinta hasn't seen for ten months. So alongside the mystery there's a gentle, quite sad story about a girl hoping her mum will actually turn up for her.

It's full of funny moments. Jacinta asks their prim steward if his comb-over is his real hair. And the Queen herself sneaks off to the public toilets on the dock while her bodyguard is busy looking for the flag (she's had two glasses of water on the way from the airport).

There's a very big cast, with lots of long double-barrelled names and people from earlier books popping up. If your reader is new to the series, they might need a minute to work out who's who. But everyone's introduced as they arrive, and the fun carries you along.

If you've got a reader who likes their mysteries kind and polite, with a heroine who always assumes the best of everybody, this is perfect.

What to read next

If they'd like to see where it all started, go back to Alice-Miranda At School, where she talks her way into boarding school a whole year early and senses something isn't right the moment she arrives.