Villains in Venice by Katherine Woodfine is an Edwardian spy adventure for 9 year olds, and the problem this time is that somebody on their own side is lying.<\/p>\n
It opens with a young man leaving a shipping office in the sleet, walking fast, keeping his face under his umbrella.<\/p>\n
He ducks into a bookshop on Charing Cross Road. Warm gas lamps, fogged windows, the smell of leather and beeswax. While a customer bores the bookseller about a book that was either green or blue, he slides an envelope into a Russian phrasebook and leaves.<\/p>\n
A few minutes later another young man comes in and buys that exact book.<\/p>\n
Nobody in the shop notices a thing, and that is rather the point of this one.<\/p>\n
Sophie Taylor is in a tea shop nearby with the morning papers spread out and her bun going untouched. Unrest in the Balkans. Trouble in Morocco. A rumoured rebellion in Albania. To everyone else those are separate items. To Sophie they make a shape.<\/p>\n
She is sure the Fraternitas Draconum are behind all of it, working to start a war they intend to profit from. Her parents died fighting them. Most people have never heard of them at all.<\/p>\n
That is a lot to carry around while drinking tea in a room full of shoppers who think everything is fine.<\/p>\n
What it feels like to read is grown up in a good way. Coded messages left in bookshops. A double agent inside the Secret Service Bureau. Sophie sent off to Venice while her partner Lil chases something equally risky at home.<\/p>\n
Your reader should know that Sophie is nearly eighteen here, running her own detective agency, and the story treats her as an adult with a job. So this is a book for a child who enjoys being trusted with grown up stakes rather than one who wants children outwitting grown ups.<\/p>\n
It is also the third book about Taylor and Rose. The earlier missions in Paris and St Petersburg get referred to a fair bit, and the betrayal at the heart of this one lands much harder if you know who everyone is.<\/p>\n
Happily the whole thing starts four books earlier and much smaller. In The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow, Sophie is fourteen, she has just lost everything, and she is selling hats at a brand new department store that has not opened its doors yet. Then something priceless goes missing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Villains in Venice by Katherine Woodfine is an Edwardian spy adventure for 9 year olds, and the problem this time is that somebody on their own side is lying. It opens with a young man leaving a shipping office in the sleet, walking fast, keeping his face under his umbrella. He ducks into a bookshop […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":10625,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":9268,"lr_next_read_anchor":"The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow","lr_seo_hook":"Coded messages, a traitor inside the service and a trail to Venice."},"book_tag":[22],"age_group":[24],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[553],"class_list":["post-9658","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-mystery-books","age_group-books-for-9-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-katherine-woodfine"],"yoast_title":"Villains in Venice by Katherine Woodfine | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"Coded messages, a traitor inside the service and a trail to Venice. For ages 9+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n