Murder Most Unladylike 2 – Arsenic for Tea

Robin Stevens's Arsenic for Tea is a country-house murder mystery for 11 year olds, with two schoolgirl detectives, a birthday tea and a guest who's been poisoned.

What happens

Hazel Wong is spending the Easter holidays at Fallingford, the grand, crumbling home of her best friend Daisy Wells. Together they are the Detective Society (Daisy is President, of course, and Hazel does all the note-taking). The book opens with something dreadful having happened to a guest called Mr Curtis, then goes back to show how they got there.

And what a house party it is. Daisy's father plays whoopee-cushion jokes. Her mother is brittle and cross and spends hours whispering on the telephone. Her brother Bertie is furious with everyone. There's a great-aunt who pockets the teaspoons, a dashing uncle who might be a spy and a governess who's far more interesting than she lets on.

Then Mr Curtis arrives. He's smug and oily, he says he's in antiques, and he's much too friendly with Daisy's mother. The girls decide he must be a con man and set out to watch him. What they actually catch him doing is something much worse for Daisy.

Hazel tells the story and she's wonderful company. She notices everything, worries about everything and is braver than she thinks. Daisy rushes at things "like a dog after a rabbit" while Hazel likes to think first. Their friendship is the best part of the book.

This is the Detective Society's second real case, and Hazel mentions their first in the opening pages. It works on its own, but it's even better if your reader has already met the girls.

Something to know before you start. Some of the grown-ups say awful things out loud. A great-aunt calls Hazel, who's from Hong Kong, "an Oriental" as though she were a bear. The book is firmly on Hazel's side and lets you feel how much it stings. Daisy watching her mother kiss another man, and crying behind a curtain, is sad too. And there's a poisoning at the centre of it all.

For a reader who loves a proper whodunnit, with clues to collect and suspects to cross off, it's a real treat. Can your reader work it out before Daisy does?

What to read next

If they haven't met Daisy and Hazel yet, start with Murder Most Unladylike, where Hazel finds a teacher's body in the school gym.