Waiting for Murder

Fleur Hitchcock's Waiting for Murder is a sweltering summer mystery for 11 year olds about a draining reservoir that gives up something nobody expected.

What happens

Dan's mum is an archaeologist, a bone expert, and she's dragged him from the city to a Somerset village for the summer. They're draining the reservoir above Sandford, and a gravestone and some bones have turned up. Mum is hoping it's the grave of Edith the Fair, a woman who died about a thousand years ago.

For Dan, it's hot, dull and full of mosquitoes. Until he notices a girl on the far bank watching him through binoculars.

That's Florence. She talks at top speed, seems to know everything about everyone and has a granddad who runs the pub. Within minutes she's told Dan about Newspaper Woman, who lives by the church and goes on about bodies in the fields. Nobody listens to her.

Then, day by day, as the water drops, a car roof appears. At dusk one evening Dan and Florence are almost sure they can see something inside. Or someone.

When the police finally drag it out, it's empty. But there are scratches round the driver's door handle that look new. The car has a seventies number plate, and the locals in the pub remember someone going missing in the long, dry summer of 1976.

It's a proper page-turner. Dan tells it in the present tense, so you're right there with him, sweating on the dam and scratching his bites. He's funny in a dry sort of way (the holiday cottage is full of cushions that say things like Happy Place, so he turns them all round). Florence is a whirlwind, and the two of them make a brilliant team.

The heat is almost a character too. Everyone is waiting for the weather to break, and the cracked dam is held together with bags of rubble. It gives the whole thing a nervy feeling that something is about to happen.

Just so you know, the title isn't kidding. This is a murder mystery, the grown-ups are clearly keeping quiet about something old, and there's talk of bodies from the first pages. It's tense rather than gory in the opening chapters, but it's pitched at older readers who like a good shiver.

If your reader loves a mystery where the kids spot what the adults won't listen to, this is a great pick for a long summer.

What to read next

After this one, try Murder In Midwinter, where a girl on the top deck of a bus sees a man with a gun in the Christmas crowds on Regent Street, and the police don't take her seriously either.