Murder in Midwinter

Fleur Hitchcock's Murder In Midwinter is a tense, twisty thriller for 11 year olds about a girl who takes a photo from a bus and ends up in hiding.

What happens

Maya is thirteen and crawling through London's shopping crowds on the bus, ten days before Christmas. She's texting her little sister Zahra about what to wear to the end-of-term party.

Then, through her phone camera, she spots a man and a woman arguing in the crowd on Regent Street. He's holding a gun.

She keeps clicking. The flash goes off. And they both look straight at her.

Maya does everything right. She rings the police and waits for them to come. But her toddler brother and sister (twins, and pure chaos) have got hold of her phone, and the memory card with the photos has vanished.

Next, a man's body is found on the Thames shore. The man she saw is wanted for murder. And Maya has a very recognisable white streak in her black hair, exactly like Zahra's.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

There's a gun, a dead body glimpsed from the riverside, and a kidnapping. Zahra is snatched by mistake (she comes back unhurt, but it's a frightening chapter). One grown-up says "bloody". It's tense rather than gory, but it's a real crime thriller, right at the top of this shelf.

For a reader who loves a mystery and can handle the fear, it's gripping.

Maya's family are brilliant company too. They run a bathroom shop under a railway bridge, all fairy lights and reindeer lamps at Christmas. Granddad calms her down by getting her to help fix his old motorbike. And when things get scary, the two sisters squash into one bed.

Soon the police decide Maya would be safest at Auntie V's in Wales. It's a muddy old trekking centre miles from anywhere, with three smelly dogs and a cousin who can barely say hello. And the sleet is turning to snow.

Maya tells it in the present tense, so you're right there beside her, feeling what she calls "feary". Isn't that the perfect word?

What to read next

Fleur Hitchcock has more mysteries in the library, like Murder At Twilight. Viv's mum was nanny to Noah, the precious heir to the grand house where they live, and Viv is sick of always coming second to him.