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Jacqueline Harvey's Alice-Miranda in Hollywood is a film-set mystery for 9 year olds, with small parts in a Wild West musical and some very pushy mums.
Alice-Miranda and Millie are staying in Los Angeles with Aunt Charlotte, Uncle Lawrence and the twins. The toddlers are a riot (Marcus ends up with chilli con carne up his nose). Magdalena the cook nearly faints when she hears the TV chef Venetia Baldini is coming to stay.
The parts came about thanks to Caprice, of all people. A talent scout heard her sing and she mentioned her friends. Now several of the children are in Lawrence's new film, with just ten days to shoot their scenes on a sound stage and out at the Grand Canyon.
Millie has a brand new guidebook and plans to bore everyone's socks off with canyon facts. Her words, not ours!
The film side gets complicated fast. Sasha has landed the lead boy role and doesn't want it at all. His grandfather owns the studio and his mum calls him "booboola" in front of everybody.
His co-star Blade has been acting since he was tiny and has trained for months for the stunts. He also goes completely tongue-tied the moment he meets Caprice. His mum is behind on the bills and quietly working out how to get Sasha off the film.
Then there's Tyger Lombardi, a photographer who'll do anything for a picture. She chases Charlotte and the twins away from Santa Monica Pier. Later a man growls at her through the intercom that she has something of his boss's, and threatens to kick her door in. She has no idea what he means.
That scene is properly tense, though the opening stays well short of anything violent. It suits a child who likes a shiver alongside the jokes.
It hops between lots of people, so your reader knows what the grown-ups are up to long before Alice-Miranda does. And once the filming starts, things begin to go wrong on set. Is someone behind it? Or could there really be a curse?
The friendships have plenty of history by now. A new reader will cope fine, but the in-jokes land better if they've met everyone before.
For more of the school choir on tour, try Alice-Miranda in Paris. The Winchester-Fayle Singers have been invited to perform during Fashion Week, and a famous couturier has just found his storeroom quietly robbed.
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