Tiara Friends: The Case of the Stolen Crown

Paula Harrison's Tiara Friends: The Case of the Stolen Crown is a palace mystery for 7 year olds about two best friends who swap places whenever they can.

What happens

Millie is Princess Amelia. Jess works at the palace as a maid. They look so alike that nobody at Peveril Palace can tell them apart (except Cook, who's in on the secret).

So they swap. Millie gets to bake her baby brother's birthday cake in Jess's apron and mob cap. Jess goes to Millie's dance lesson instead, and the teacher doesn't suspect a thing.

Then the Baby Diamond Crown goes missing. Every royal baby has worn it on their first birthday for hundreds of years, and Prince Edward's party is the very next day.

Just before it vanished, Millie saw a shadowy figure running from her mother's room. Who was it? The butler, Mr Steen, is acting very oddly, and soon he's hurrying out of the palace with a little wooden box under his arm.

What follows is proper detective work that a young reader can follow along with. The girls measure a muddy footprint with a hair ribbon and a wooden spoon. They squeeze through a loose railing to trail a suspect into town. When someone wrecks the palace kitchen in the night, they find strange round marks in the spilt flour.

Nearly every chapter adds a new clue or suspect, so there's always something to puzzle over at bedtime. Is it the tutor with the enormous feet? Or the Lord Chamberlain with his walking stick?

It's a gentle sort of mystery, built on clues and disguises rather than scares. There's a floppy-eared spaniel called Jax too, who charges into the lake at the worst possible moment (and has to be rinsed under the pump afterwards).

The swapping is the best bit. Millie would honestly rather bake than dance, and Jess loves the dance lessons. Their secret pinkie promise, Double Trouble, will probably turn up in a few playgrounds!

What to read next

If this one goes down well, there's more palace sleuthing in The Secret of the Silk Dress. Millie's two squabbling cousins come to stay, and a dress goes missing before the wrong person gets the blame.