Murder Most Unladylike 9 – Death Sets Sail

Robin Stevens's Death Sets Sail is a murder mystery for 11 year olds that takes Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong on a paddle steamer up the Nile.

What happens

Hazel tells you on the very first page that this is the last case the Detective Society will ever solve together. She's writing it up at a cold, gloomy Christmas, and she's heartbroken. Then she goes back to explain how it all happened.

It begins with a dull term at Deepdean. There's no crime at all, and Daisy is desperate for something to happen. Then their friend Amina invites them to spend Christmas in Egypt.

What a trip it is. There are pyramids at the end of the street, mummies in glass cases and fireworks on a Cairo rooftop. Hazel's father and little sisters come along too. So, to Hazel's secret delight, does a certain boy she wrote to in invisible ink.

Everywhere they go they bump into the Breath of Life. They're a gang of very grand English tourists, convinced they're ancient pharaohs reborn. Their leader, Theodora Miller, bellows at porters. Two of the members fall out over which of them is really Hatshepsut. Theodora's own daughter, Heppy, gets black marks in a book just for chewing her hair. And they're all sailing on the same boat as the girls. It isn't long before someone on board is stabbed in the night.

As ever, it's Hazel's casebook, so you get her careful, anxious, very honest thoughts. She notices nearly everything. The one thing she's slow to spot is why Daisy goes pink whenever Amina winks at her. It's handled so sweetly.

Amina also shows them the Egypt that tourists don't see. She haggles for scarab beetles and takes them for tea at a club where Egyptians aren't supposed to be let in (which is exactly why she goes).

Something to know first. That opening is sad on purpose, and you read everything after it knowing how Hazel feels. There's a stabbing and blood in a cabin, and back at school a friend's mother is dying. The girls are fifth formers now, older than when the series began, and there's a little romance in the air. It lands hardest on a reader who already loves these two.

What to read next

So if you're starting fresh, go back to Murder Most Unladylike, where Hazel finds a teacher's body and the Detective Society finally gets a real case.