Robin Stevens's Blog, page 60

Bulletin for the Center for Children’s Books review Murder is Bad Manners

The Bulletin for the Center for Children’s Books have reviewed Murder is Bad Manners! They say:

‘Thirteen-year-old Hazel Wong and her best friend, Daisy Wells, students at Deepdean School in 1930s England, aspire to be detectives. To that end they have formed a secret Detective Society, practicing their observational skills by snooping on their peers and teachers and memorizing license plates. When Hazel discovers science teacher Miss Bell dead in the gym one evening, and the corpse then disap- pears before anyone else can witness it, the society has a real case at last (much to Daisy’s delight and Hazel’s trepidation). The pair put their deductive skills to work as they seek to solve the mystery of Miss Bell’s death, and gradually they begin to whittle down the suspect list, discovering a connection to a Deepdean student who “accidentally” died the previous year. Stevens’ story, narrated by Hazel, is a first-rate homage to English boarding school adventure and period murder-mystery tales. Hazel’s astute observations as a cultural outsider (she’s a native of Hong Kong) add an interesting layer of depth to the narrative while also making it more accessible to non-British audiences (a helpful “Guide to Deepdean,” provided by Daisy at book’s end, amusingly sheds more light on specific terminology). Spot art at the beginning of each chapter features Daisy and Hazel in silhouette and sporting flashlights, a satisfyingly correct period detail. Middle-schoolers with a taste for Agatha Christie (and perhaps PBS costume or mystery dramas) will eat this up and ask for more.’ JH

Murder Most Unladylike author events – June 2015

It’s summer in the city, and that means only one thing . . . First Class Murder is almost here. It’ll be steaming into shops on the 30th July, and I’ve been preparing for its release by getting out and about all over the country to talk about Daisy & Hazel’s adventures.

On the 21st, I visited the beautiful St-Annes-on-Sea to be part of wonderful indie bookstore Storytellers Inc‘s first ever Midsummer Mystery festival. Five of the Mystery Girls, the most cunning and crime-obsessed MG authors in the business – Katherine Woodfine, Helen Moss, Kate Pankhurst, Elen Caldecott and myself – came to give presentations about our detective books, eat bunbreak, and take part in an absolutely baffling mystery. As well as being authors, we were all suspects in the Case of the Missing Manuscript, the theft of the latest crime novel manuscript from noted local author Davinia Carruthers-Henley.

I really do think that the future of detection in England is bright – I met a lot of really brilliant sleuths who were extremely keen to solve the mystery, and uncomfortably close to the truth very quickly. Suspicion fell on Elen and Kate in the beginning, but those were just red herrings. I’m dreadfully ashamed to say that at the end of the day I was revealed to be the dastardly thief. I’m terribly sorry – as always, I just wanted to read the book before anyone else . . .

Sunset on the beautiful St-Annes-on-Sea beach

My hotel came with a CONCIERGE DOG.

Mystery Girls ready to go!

Kate Pankhurst, Helen Moss and Katherine Woodfine plot our next crime.

A Midsummer bunbreak!

Celebrating a most mysterious day!

On the Monday after the festival, I went with my detective pal and partner in crime Katherine Woodfine, author of The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow, to visit Heyhouses Endowed Church of England School. We had a great time telling the kids about our books, and I have to say, doing events with other authors might be my new favourite thing. I love being part of a team, and I love hearing about how other authors create their books.

Ready to go at our school visit!

Katherine Woodfine reads from The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow

James reads along!

On the 28th June, I travelled to Bedford to be part of the Bedford Bookfest. I managed to sneak into the event before mine, by a certain new children’s laureate, and I now know that Chris Riddell’s commute is way quicker than mine. While I spend every morning sitting on a train floor, wedged between a seat and a bin, he . . . walks down his garden to his writing studio. I’m extremely jealous, though I do wonder if I’d ever write anything in such comfort.

Chris was a hard act to follow, but all the same I think my event went well, and I hope I inspired the audience to write their own detective stories, as well as read mine!

Chris Riddell and his commute

With UNBELIEVABLY giant books!

Remembering my youth at Bedford.

Signing Libby’s book after my talk.

And with fab bookseller Emma Turner!

And finally, about First Class Murder . . . On Wednesday this week I got a very special delivery: the first advance copy! I keep expecting that this moment will mean less to me, the more books I write – but meeting my third book for the first time turned out to be just as fantastic a moment as seeing my first.

I love this book – it might be my favourite of the ones I’ve written so far – and I am delighted with how it looks. Huge thanks to my illustrator, Nina Tara, and my designer Laura Bird (with help from Janene Spencer). It’s going to look incredible on shelves – you won’t be able to miss its orange glow! Only three weeks left . . .

With First Class Murder for the very first time, on the hottest day of the year!

Happy audiobook birthday, Murder Most Unladylike and Arsenic for Tea!

It’s book birthday time again! Not for First Class Murder (not quite yet, anyway – the countdown clock is at t – 42 days and I’m already planning my baking for the launch on the 1st of August), but for the audiobooks of the first two books, Murder Most Unladylike and Arsenic for Tea.

They’re read by the wonderful Gemma Chan (of Sherlock and Fresh Meat fame, and currently being seen on Channel 4’s excellent Humans), and having listened through to both I can confirm that they’re delightful. Actually hearing my books as words out loud was so strange that at several points I forgot (for about the first time ever) that I’d written them. During the denouement of Murder Most Unladylike I got very concerned about Daisy & Hazel’s safety and had to go pacing around the house in a state of great nervousness.

The audio versions are available for download from today, and I’d definitely recommend you do. First Class Murder is currently being recorded, and should hopefully be available not long after the physical book is released.

So here’s to Hazel being given a voice!

With Gemma Chan, the voice of Hazel!

Author adventures – May and June 2015

It’s been a busy few weeks! I’ve been out and about in schools, bookshops and libraries – below is a round-up of my latest author adventures.

On the 8th, I  put on my editor hat and did a talk with my friend Non Pratt (author of Trouble and Remix, and also someone whose day job used to involve editing other people’s books). We spoke to a group of new and upcoming authors about what to expect when you’re expecting a book, and how best to run your author life after you’ve been published. Here we are below with our fancy BatNon & Robin logo, and also our frog pens (because all good superheroes need frog pens). Check out the #BatNon hashtag on Twitter if you want to read more about the event, and find out about our (hopefully useful) tips.

Partners in crime – photo by Katie Webber

On the next night, for a complete change, I gave a talk at Waterstones Hampstead with adult crime writer (and author of the authorised new Poirot novel The Monogram Murders), Sophie Hannah. We spoke about Agatha Christie’s influence on our lives (we’re both equally obsessed, and we even have oddly similar origin stories – both of us were first given second-hand copies of a Poirot by our fathers aged about age 11) and how much we’re in debt to her as authors. The event was given a fantastic write-up by Sophie, aged 9, who I’m pretty sure is going to take over publishing and/or authoring one day very soon.

Me, Sophie and Sophie Hannah at Hampstead – photo by Sophie’s mother Tanya

On the 12th of June, I had the amazing and extremely odd experience of being invited back to my old primary school, the Dragon, as an author. Everything was much smaller, but otherwise strangely the same – same uniforms, same bunbreaks, same buildings and even (strangely) some of the same teachers – only now, those teachers just turn out to be other grown-up humans. It felt a little like being on the other side of a mirror. I gave two workshops to the pupils there, and helped them come up with some amazing murder mysteries – one involving a secret robot dinosaur, one about a murderous sidekick, and one where the murder weapon was a trained monkey.

My old library! Scene of much lunch break reading.

A Dragon School staff room bunbreak.

The bunbreak bell!

Workshop in progress!

Beautiful school grounds.

In the afternoon, I went to the ever-brilliant Story Museum to help a group of girls from Didcot Girls’ School with the plot and script for their awesome Gothic murder mystery, Night at the Asylum. It’s taking place on Friday 19th June, and I can guarantee that it’s going to be terrifying. If you’re in Oxford, and you can go, you absolutely should. If you can handle it, that is …

Having fun at the Story Museum’s Reading exhibition after the workshop

And finally, on Saturday 13th, I visited Oxford Central Library – which was another time warp moment. I grew up in central Oxford, and I went to the Oxford Library almost every single week. It’s where I discovered Terry Pratchett, and L M Montgomery, and so many more authors who I’ve been in love with ever since.

Coming back as an author was incredibly weird and wonderful – and I also got a very special surprise when I discovered that three of the girls in the audience had actually dressed up as Deepdean pupils. We did detective activities (and we all wore Detective Society badges, courtesy of librarian Jo) and I answered everyone’s questions about me and my books.

Ready to go!

Author in the Library.

Activity time!

With my three Deepdean girls!

So there you go – that’s my author round-up. I’ve had a brilliant time over the past few weeks, and I hope that if you came to see me at any of the events you had as much fun as I did.

Hay Festival 2015

Authors at Hay – with Catherine Doyle and Melinda Salisbury

As soon as I could read, my father and I bonded over books. Of course, he loved me from the moment I was born, but I get the feeling that he wasn’t entirely sure what to do with me until the day he realised that he had created a fellow book nut. He would come into my room while I was reading and gently deposit a pile of books next to me, and we both knew that we understood each other perfectly.

So, of course, when we spent time together, we went to bookshops. We had happy afternoons in Blackwell’s and Waterstones (and Ottakar’s, remember that?), and on one very special weekend every year we went on a road trip to our ultimate Mecca, Hay-on-Wye.

As a child, Hay was pretty much my vision of heaven on earth – a place where every shop was a second-hand bookshop, where everything smelt slightly like musty pages and where I was allowed to go running through towering, wobbly stacks of paperbacks, frantically filling my arms with all of the books that caught my eye. I have a powerful memory of the moment when my father led me up the stairs of Murder & Mayhem, the crime-specialist bookshop, pointed to the entire wall of Agatha Christie books facing us, and said, ‘Which ones don’t you have? Buy them.’ Hay helped make me a reader, and a writer – and for years one of my biggest life goals has been to go to Hay Festival.

So you can imagine how it felt when I was invited to Hay this year. I genuinely never imagined that my first Festival experience would be as an author, hanging out in the Green Room in weirdly close proximity to Jude Law and Sandi Toksvig, going through doors that said Artists Only and feeling only 80% like a gigantic fraud.

For me?

I was lucky enough to do an event with my friend and fellow Mystery Girl Katherine Woodfine, whose book, The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow, is out on the 4th of June, and is absolutely the perfect thing for anyone impatient for First Class Murder. Set in an Edwardian department store, it’s a mix of Mr Selfridge, Philip Pullman’s Sally Lockheart series and Nancy Drew, full of ace young detectives, dastardly villains, clever code cracking and delicious iced buns. I love it, and I think you will too.

Mystery Girls in the Green Room, ready for our event!

Katherine and I talked about the golden age children’s books and crime novels that inspired us, our obsession with the 1900s and 1930s respectively and our love of all things detective. Katherine read from The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow, and I read (for only the second time ever) from First Class Murder. Then I spoke about Gunpowder, Murder & Plot, the fourth Murder Most Unladylike Mystery (currently at 13,000 words on my laptop, and set to be published in spring 2016), and caused great excitement when I told the audience that it would take place at Deepdean School and involve the death of the new Head Girl (not, I promise, the old one – King Henry doesn’t appear in it!).

Katherine reads from the Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow – picture by Claire Shanahan

I read from First Class Murder – picture by Michelle Toy

Below are a further selection of pictures from my weekend, and our event. For me the whole experience genuinely was a dream come true.

Me and Katherine on the Starlight Stage at Hay

With our thank-you roses after the event – picture by Harriet Venn

Signing books in the bookshop tent – picture by Harriet Venn

Our incredible signing queue! – picture by Claire Fayers

With blogger Michelle Toy and her son

In the Lovereading tent signing their author tree – picture by Harriet Venn

If you did come to the event, I hope you enjoyed it! Elizabeth R has sent me a lovely video of her reviewing Murder Most Unladylike, which she read after watching me talk about it. She’s now reading Arsenic for Tea – here’s a picture of her with it, below. Looking at her bookshelves, she has excellent reading taste!

Elizabeth R reading Arsenic for Tea after the Hay Festival event.

 

Murder is Bad Manners is #8 on the Indie Next List for Summer 2015

Great news! Murder is Bad Manners, the US edition of Murder Most Unladylike, has been chosen as #8 on the Summer 2015 Indie Next List.

It’s been given a great review: Cathy Berner from Blue Willow Bookshop says ‘Hong Kong transplant Hazel Wong serves as Watson to Daisy Wells’ Sherlock Holmes in this debut middle-grade mystery series set in 1934 at Deepdean School for Girls. After Hazel finds the body of Miss Bell, the science teacher, it suddenly disappears, setting the Wells and Wong Detective Society on the case. Hazel narrates the story through her casebook, revealing that she is the more analytical of the pair. There are plenty of red herrings and wrong turns, but in the end Wells and Wong solve the case and leave readers eager to read more of their appealing tales.’

I’m delighted that my book is featured on the list – it’s so nice to see American readers embracing my heroines and their bunbreaks!

Booklist review of Murder is Bad Manners

Booklist have reviewed the American edition of Murder Most Unladylike, Murder is Bad Manners! They say:

‘Here’s a mystery import, set in the 1930s, that does justice to its British roots. Hazel Wong has come from Hong Kong to attend Deepdean boarding school. An outcast until she is accepted by upper-crust Daisy Wells, Hazel is happy to be half of a two-girl detective agency. The crimes they solve are silly—until Hazel discovers the body of their dead science teacher in the gym. By the time she gets Daisy, the body is gone. The situation grows more complicated as the girls dash around Deepdean, learning secrets about teachers (including a hint of a same-sex relationship), picking up clues, and getting in all sorts of mischief (such as drinking ipecac to make themselves ill). Then another murder occurs. This is a delightfully designed book, from the throwback cover to the school map inside . . . Nancy Drew, meet Wells and Wong.’ – Booklist

The title of Murder Most Unladylike Book 4 is . . .

Gunpowder, Murder & Plot

Intrigued? Well, here’s an early synopsis, to whet your appetite . . .

It’s a new year at Deepdean – Daisy & Hazel are now in the fourth form. The school has a whole new group of mistresses . . . and a new Head Girl and Prefects. But these Big Girls are certainly not good eggs – they rule the school by bullying all of the younger years, and each other.

By the beginning of November, tensions are running high, and it’s hardly a surprise when, after the fireworks display at Deepdean’s Bonfire Night Celebrations, Head Girl Elizabeth Hurst is found dead. She’s been hit on the head by a heavy object. But who could have done it? And what does the murder have to do with the secrets that are suddenly being discovered on pieces of paper all round the school? One thing’s for sure . . . sparks will fly.

I’m so excited to be taking my heroines back to Deepdean, where their adventures began – and so pleased to be able to revisit some of my favourite characters from the first book. So, what do you think about the title, and the plot? Which characters from Murder Most Unladylike are you hoping (though without spoilers, please!) I’ll bring back? Let me know on Twitter, by email, or in the comments below!

Bookseller review of First Class Murder

First Class Murder has just been given its first review! It was the 9-12 pick for August children’s fiction, and Fiona Noble says:

‘This is book three and it’s a delight. Hazel and Daisy are aboard the Orient Express: cue spies, priceless jewels, a murder and seriously upgraded bunbreaks. The tone may be light, but Stevens isn’t afraid to go deeper: there’s once again racism towards Hong Kong-born Hazel and her father, and we very much sense the dark shadow of Hitler looming over Europe.’

Murder Most Unladylike: Audiobook Recordings

A few months ago I announced the exciting news that my Murder Most Unladylike Mysteries were being made into audiobooks.

Since then, my publishers have been working to hire an actor and set up the recordings, and yesterday I was lucky enough to be able to go into the Penguin Random House recording studio, to listen to my books being turned into audio.

I’m completely delighted to be able to tell you now that the stories are being read by Gemma Chan (you might know her from Fresh Meat, Sherlock and Doctor Who, and she’s going to be in Channel 4’s Humans next). She’s pretty much the perfect Hazel, and she makes my books sound unbelievably classy.

With Gemma Chan, the voice of Hazel!

My agent, my editor, my publicist and I all descended on the studio together and had the best time possible. We got to see how the recording process works (it’s so much more careful than I was expecting – sometimes each sentence is repeated three or four times, to make sure that each word is clear and the intonation is correct, and the actor is directed to help them get the most out of each phrase), and to listen to Gemma as she read the murder scene from Arsenic for Tea.

Hearing the text spoken was a surprisingly wonderful experience. It suddenly sounded so big and real, like a proper book by a proper author, not one written in bits and pieces on my commuter train and the sofa in my living room.

Below are some pictures I took of the afternoon. The first two audiobooks, Murder Most Unladylike and Arsenic for Tea, will be out some time in the summer, with First Class Murder following soon after – I’ll alert you all as soon as they’re available for purchase! You’re definitely going to want to buy them, even if you’ve already read the books – they really add something amazing to the stories.

Pages of Arsenic for Tea marked up for reading.

Gemma’s mark-ups in more detail. Every intonation is noted!

Gemma reading!

The recording being made.

My wonderful editor and agent listen to the book being read!

Me with Gemma in the recording studio.