The Boy Who Flew

Fleur Hitchcock's The Boy Who Flew is a dark, thrilling adventure for 11 year olds about a boy building a flying machine, and the murder that leaves him to finish it alone.

What happens

Athan Wilde spends his nights running across the rooftops. By day he works for Mr Chen, the inventor across the street, who pays him in gold and teaches him how the world works. Together they've built an engine that actually runs.

The very next morning, Mr Chen is found dead in his kitchen. Murdered.

Athan decides he'll finish their flying machine himself, with his rooftop friend Tod. The trouble is that the pieces are scattered all over Mr Chen's house, which is about to be sold off at auction. And a sharp-faced lady and a scarred man with ice-blue eyes seem very interested in what's left.

Meanwhile Athan's ma wants him to get a respectable job with a wig. If he can't find better work by the new year, his uncle says he'll be sent to join the nightmen, who empty the city's cesspits after dark. No wonder he'd rather fly.

Athan tells it in the present tense, so you're right there with him. You can smell the ginger and sulphur in Mr Chen's larder and feel the cold coming off the slates. There's plenty of humour too. A pomegranate explodes across the kitchen wall, and Grandma says grace like she's reading out a list of curses (she's quite something).

And Mr Chen has hidden something very important in the grimmest place imaginable. Athan has to reach right down the privy to get it. Yes, really.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

The murder happens off the page, but Athan helps his uncle scrub the dark stain off the kitchen floor, and his grandma and a neighbour cackle over gory made-up stories about how Mr Chen died. There's a genuinely menacing stranger, and Tod's dad is known for taking his belt to him. It's all very much at the top of this shelf.

If your reader likes their adventures with real danger and a mystery to crack, this is a great pick. If they're easily spooked by a villain who knows where they live, it might be one to save for later.

What to read next

For another Fleur Hitchcock mystery full of swords, secrets and a wrongful accusation, try Mouse Heart. Mouse is sword-fighting on the empty stage of her theatre one morning when one of her theatre family staggers in with blood on his hands, swearing he didn't do it.