The Case of the Counterfeit Criminals

Jordan Stratford's The Case of the Counterfeit Criminals is a clever, comic detective story for 10 year olds about two girl detectives, a kidnapped dog and a fake sea monster.

What happens

Ada is nearly twelve and brilliant. She's also stuck in bed with a fever, and her doctor is treating her with leeches (yes, real ones, every single day). Her best friend Mary is the one who notices things. Together they run the Wollstonecraft Detective Agency from Ada's grand London house.

Then Ada's grandmother arrives, with her servants and her wheezing, snotty pug. Suddenly her tutor, her little sister and her old governess all have to leave the house. And Gran thinks the whole detective agency is nonsense.

But a letter has come from Lyme Regis. Miss Mary Anning, who digs up very old bones from the cliffs, has lost her little dog Tray in a landslide. Then she finds a ransom note on her kitchen table, glued together from newspaper letters. If she wants Tray back, she must swear that a sea-monster skeleton for sale at the British Museum is real. She's sure it's a fake.

They have three days.

What makes these books such fun is Ada herself. She's blunt to the point of rude ("Can. No."), hates anything being moved, and invents things constantly. She has a brass calculating machine she calls the bleh. And she beats her leeches with a homemade potion of tobacco and eucalyptus. Who wouldn't cheer at that?

Mary is the warm one, gently getting Ada "unstuck" when she digs her heels in. There's a lovely friendship between them. There's plenty of mystery too, like the pair of people painted to look like dolls, who keep appearing outside the window.

The language is rich and playful. There's Latin, taxonomy and a lot of long words, all handled with a light touch. Got a reader who likes a detective with a big brain and an even bigger attitude? This is their book.

This is the agency's third case, and it looks back to their first two, but a new reader can pick it up and follow it. The leeches are described in squirmy detail, so a squeamish reader might want warning!

What to read next

For another girl who has to earn her way in old London, try The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow. Sophie sells hats in a grand new department store that hasn't even opened yet, and a clockwork sparrow that plays a different tune every time is about to arrive with a load of royal jewels.