Murder Most Unladylike 4 – Jolly Foul Play

Robin Stevens's Jolly Foul Play is a boarding-school murder mystery for 11 year olds, with a Bonfire Night body and a whole gang of suspects in prefects' badges.

What happens

This is the fourth Murder Most Unladylike mystery. Hazel Wong and Daisy Wells are back at Deepdean School for Girls, and the school has gone horribly wrong.

Elizabeth Hurst, the school's new Head Girl, collects secrets about everyone and uses them. Her five prefects hand out the punishments. Laps in the rain. Lines at lunchtime. Puddings snatched away. Even Beanie's pet dormouse gets taken. Everyone gets nastier, all the way down the school, and the friends start snapping at each other too.

Then comes the fireworks display. Everyone is looking up at the sky, and afterwards Elizabeth is found dead beside the bonfire with a rake next to her. The teachers call it an accident. Daisy is certain it isn't.

The clever part is who's left. The only people near the bonfire were the five prefects, and every one of them had reasons to hate her.

As always it's written as Hazel's casebook, so you're right there with her noticing every little thing. The best bits are about friendship. Hazel is keeping a secret from Daisy for the first time (some letters she's hiding at the bottom of her tuck box). And their dorm mates Kitty, Beanie and Lavinia finally get let into the Detective Society, with a very solemn pledge and a threat of medieval tortures!

It's so good at the feel of school when a few older girls are in charge and the grown-ups don't notice. Anyone who has been picked on by bigger kids will recognise it.

It's worth knowing the bullying here is properly cruel and the victim is a pupil, found with a head wound. It's a murder mystery, so a death is the point, but it's closer to home than a stranger in a country house. There's also a prefect whose father is in the Nazi Party, mentioned in passing.

A reader who loves puzzles and working out whodunnit alongside the girls will be gripped. The book also talks openly about the earlier cases, so it's much better if they start at the very beginning, with Murder Most Unladylike.

What to read next

If they love an old-fashioned school with dark corridors and secrets, The Lost Twin is in the library too. Ivy is sent to her twin sister's school to take her place, fetched by a very strict teacher, and something about the whole thing doesn't add up.