Premeditated Myrtle by Elizabeth C. Bunce *****

Myrtle Hardcastle was a 12-year-old Victorian Lady of Quality. Adults called her “precocious,” “curious,” and “irrepressible.” She was a scientific detective. Her father raised her to be “clever and inquisitive,” but at times he regretted this decision. When the next-door neighbor didn’t appear in her garden one morning, Myrtle investigated. The woman was dead. The police surgeon declared this a natural death. Myrtle had other ideas. “Old ladies in good health didn’t just suddenly drop dead in the middle of the night… Maybe I couldn’t call for an inquest, but I certainly found Miss Wodehouse’s death suspicious. More than suspicious, in fact. It was murder!”

Myrtle’s companion was her governess, Miss Judson. Her father, Arthur Hardcastle, the Prosecutor, wished she would spend more time with girls her age instead of embarrassing him in court. However, Myrtle had no desire to be a young lady of quality. She described a fancy tea dress given to her as: “It was an atrocity of pale blue silk and lace, afflicted with bows and buttons and writhing tentacles of ribbon. I backed up lest the thing spring from the box to attack me.”

The suspects included Miss Priscilla Wodehouse who appeared in American newspapers as the Black Widow, infamous murderer of several rich husbands; and the obnoxious cousin Giles Northcutt, a distant relation, who kept showing up wearing his “ghastly yellow tartan jacket” under suspicious circumstances. The third suspect was Miss Wodehouse’s gardener, Mr. Hamm. The police arrested him after he destroyed Miss Wodehouse’s valuable garden of lilies. Even after he confessed, Myrtle didn’t believe he was the murderer.

Myrtle used her telescope, microscope, her knowledge of poisons and the law to solve this murder. She was aided by Miss Judson and Peony, Miss Wodehouse’s cat.

This is a historical novel set in Victorian England near the end of the 19^th century.

2021 Edgar award winner.

A well-read, Victorian 12-year-old solves a murder that baffles all the adults. Simply delightful.

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