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Shannon L. Brown's The Feather Chase is a light, funny summer mystery for 10 year olds about two cousins who find a locked briefcase on a mountain trail.
Sophie and Jessica are both twelve, and they couldn't be more different. Sophie runs everywhere, jumps the stream in her back garden and lives in faded jeans. Jessica is from London, paints her nails halfway up a hike and has turned up for a forest summer in fancy sandals.
They haven't seen each other since they were tiny. Now Jessica's parents are working abroad, and she's stuck in Sophie's little mountain town for the whole holiday.
Then, on a grumpy walk, they spot a black leather briefcase lying next to a pine tree. The sheriff calls in the local locksmith to open it and POOF! It's full of feathers.
Why would anyone carry a case of feathers up a mountain? Sophie is sure it's spies. Or a bank robber. Or maybe the man in the brown suit who keeps turning up around town.
It's a gentle, cosy mystery. There's a sheriff who knows Sophie by name, a bakery that puts bananas in everything and a secret passage behind a hotel waterfall. The scariest it gets is a stranger sitting down at their milkshake table and a branch snapping on the path home.
The best bit is the cousins. The chapters swap between them, so you see how each one gets the other completely wrong. A whipped cream fight in the kitchen turns into their first proper laugh together (and Sophie's dad just swipes a fingerful and wanders off!).
Jessica has a secret of her own too. She hides how clever she is because she's worried she won't fit in. That's a feeling plenty of kids will recognise.
If you've got a reader who likes their mysteries more funny than frightening, this is a very comfy summer read.
For another girl roped into summer trouble by her cousin, try Really Truly, the third Pumpkin Falls Mystery. Truly Lovejoy's cousin Mackenzie signs them up for mermaid lessons, and there's a huge family reunion in matching T-shirts before the mystery even gets going.
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