Read Ra the Mighty 1 – Cat Detective free for 7 days. £7.99/month after - less than a paperback.
Amy Butler Greenfield's Ra the Mighty 1 - Cat Detective is an ancient Egyptian mystery for 7 year olds, with the smuggest and laziest cat in the whole palace telling it.
Ra is Pharaoh's Cat. He lies by the pool. He is brought antelope stew and spiced ibex. He is carried onto boats and carried off them again. He describes all of this as making the most of every hour.
His friend Khepri is a scarab beetle who works constantly and cannot understand him. Khepri rolls dung balls, talks about dung balls, and would like Ra to try rolling one.
Then a scruffy young cat called Miu comes over the wall with a problem. A girl called Tedimut, who works for Pharaoh's Great Wife, has been accused of stealing an amulet. The guards are searching the town for her. Miu thinks she never left the palace, and she wants Ra to help look.
Ra says no. He is very busy.
Miu calls him a pampered nincompoop. Khepri threatens to put dung in his snacks for a fortnight. Ra takes the case.
The joke that runs all the way through is the gap between what Ra says about himself and what is actually happening. He is the greatest detective in Egypt, obviously, except that Khepri spots every clue first and Miu does all the running. He is also, to be fair, genuinely quick when it matters, which he will tell you about at length.
Your reader gets a real palace along with the jokes. Hunting dogs in one wing. A throne gilded with Nubian gold. A hiding place on a ledge behind a painted frieze of lotus flowers. And, best of all, a man whose actual job is Director of the Royal Loincloths.
No content to flag here at all. Nobody is hurt, the danger is a kick from a grumpy overseer, and the worst thing that happens to Ra is being teased.
It is a good pick if your reader wants a proper mystery but is not ready for anything frightening. The stakes are real, because a child is missing and in trouble, but the tone never once turns dark.
And if your reader has ever met a cat who thinks it owns the house, they will know exactly who Ra is.
If they want another case for the same unlikely trio, The Great Tomb Robbery is there too. This time a tomb in the Valley of the Kings has been ransacked, and Ra is at Thebes, being brushed and perfumed and hoping nobody asks him to do any work.
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