The Housetrap

Emma Read's The Housetrap is a spooky puzzle mystery for 9 year olds about four children shut inside a mansion that shouldn't be there at all.

What happens

Deliah's best friend Claude is moving to Cornwall in two days. It should be a big goodbye. Instead he's upstairs on the Switch with his new mate Sam, and Deliah is downstairs doing a Killer Sudoku on her own.

Then Amity, Claude's younger sister, disappears into Badwell Woods. Everyone round here is told to keep out (sinkholes, old mine tunnels and a lot of stories about kids who went in and never came back).

So the three of them go after her. Past a DANGER OF DEATH sign, past some very faded missing posters, and out into a clearing where a grand old house sits with no road leading to it.

Inside, it's spotless. Champagne on ice, a grandfather clock stuck at half past seven, and a party invitation written as a riddle. Then the front door shuts behind them.

Deliah finds maths comforting. Numbers add up and people don't. So being trapped with a boy who calls her Dreary McDeery, and an old best friend who laughs along, is almost worse than the ghosts Amity swears are in the walls.

Who shut that door? Deliah's first guess is Sam, and she says so, loudly! Nobody in this group is getting on, and they're going to have to.

The puzzles are really satisfying. A trick statue that unlocks the doors. A secret room behind a photograph. A hidden door Deliah overthinks completely (Amity just pushes it). And this is a house that can rearrange its own rooms, which gives the whole thing a lovely sense of the floor shifting under you.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

It gets properly creepy in places. There's a dark room full of smashed frames, a Ouija board and a notebook smudged with what looks like blood. At the heart of it is a little girl who went missing in 1930. Sam's digs about girls are meant to wind you up, and they do.

A reader who scares easily might want to share the first few chapters with you. One who loves a creepy house and a good riddle will probably race through it.

What to read next

If they'd like another bunch of kids locked in with only their brains to get them out, try Christopher Edge's Escape Room. Ami turns up for a night at the ultimate puzzle game and finds a team of strangers waiting to play.