For young detective Aggie Morton and her friend Hector, Christmas becomes a lot more exciting when a dead body is found in this second book in the Aggie Morton, Mystery Queen series, inspired by the life of Agatha Christie as a child and her most popular creation, Hercule Poirot. For fans of The Wollstonecraft Detective Agency.
Aspiring writer Aggie Morton is looking forward to Christmas. Having just solved a murder and survived her own brush with death in her small town of Torquay on the coast of England, Aggie can’t wait to spend the holidays with her sister Marjorie, the new Lady Greyson of Owl Park, an enormous manor house in the country; Grannie Jane and her fellow sleuth and partner in crime, Hector Perot. Owl Park holds many delights including Aggie’s almost cousin Lucy, exciting and glamorous visitors from Ceylon and disguises aplenty in the form of a group of travelling actors, not to mention a secret passageway AND an enormous, cursed emerald. Not even glowering old Lady Greyson (the Senior) can interfere with Aggie’s festive cheer. But when Aggie and her friends discover a body instead of presents on Christmas morning, things take a deadly serious turn. With the help of a certain nosy reporter, Aggie and Hector will once again have to put their deductive skills and imaginations to work to find the murderer on the loose.Cast of characters. Sources.
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Jocelyn turns to the country house party trope in this entertaining Aggie Morton sequel (The Body Under the Piano, rev. 1/20). Twelve-year-old Aggie (loosely based on Agatha Christie) and her friend Hector Perot are spending Christmas at Owl Park, where Aggie’s sister, newly a baroness, is learning to be mistress of a great house. The mystery begins when the other guests arrive. One guest, Lakshay Sivam, is carrying a possibly cursed emerald, which he plans to return to his native Sri Lanka; it disappears just as one of the actors hired to entertain the house party is murdered—and then Lakshay goes missing. Although the police take charge, Aggie, Hector, and their new friend Lucy can’t stop themselves from doing some investigating of their own. With a solidly plotted whodunit, Jocelyn keeps readers guessing through a complex cast of suspects, all with something to hide, and enough red herrings to keep any detective on her toes. Despite the high stakes, the book keeps a generally light tone, making for an enjoyable read. Jocelyn touches on deeper issues, including Aggie’s concerns about her widowed mother’s ongoing depression, but the action always takes center stage. SARAH RETTGER