Poison Pen

Poppy Fields Mystery #7

by Tanya Landman

This title is seventh in the brilliantly addictive series of murder mysteries by an acclaimed and popular writer. It's Book Week, and Poppy and Graham are helping out at their local literacy festival. However, when the authors start getting anonymous notes featuring cartoons of themselves suffering grisly deaths, the intrepid pair realize that the world of children's books is murkier than they could ever have imagined. They'll have to move quickly to discover who's at the bottom of it - before fiction turns into fact...

Genres: Mystery

128 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2010

About the author

Carnegie Medal winning Tanya Landman is the author of more than thirty books for children and young adults.

Born and brought up in Kent, Tanya had no intention of becoming a writer until the idea for Waking Merlin popped into her head. "It came from nowhere. It was completely out of the blue."

Tanya now lives and works in Bideford and the nearby coastline was the inspiration for her Flotsam & Jetsam series.

Tanya's first books were "adventure stories with a sprinkling of magic and spoonful of humour." But then Tanya turned to crime, writing Mondays are Murder (winner of a Red House Book Award) - the first in a series of ten "Agatha-Christie-for-kids" featuring child sleuth Poppy Fields and her friend Graham. Her new highly illustrated books for younger children feature Sam Swann, an accident-prone boy sleuth and his faithful canine sidekick Watson.

Although she writes across a broad age range, Tanya is probably best known for her historical novels for young adults. 
Apache - set in 19th century America - was shortlisted for several UK awards including the Teenage Book Trust and the Carnegie Medal (where it was voted the Shadowing Groups favourite). The US edition won a Borders Original Voices prize and a Spur award from the Western Writers of America. 
The Goldsmith's Daughter - set in the Aztec empire during the Spanish invasion - was nominated for the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children's Fiction prize. Buffalo Soldier
 won the 2015 Carnegie Medal. Hell and High Water - a swashbuckling thriller set in 18th century Devon - was shortlisted for the 2016 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and nominated for the Carnegie Medal. Her latest book Beyond the Wall is set in Roman Britain. Passing for White comes out later this year.

Reviews

[Sunshine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my fave one but I do love my Poppy Fields adventures. Good old Graham throwing his blink and you miss 'em smiles all over the place!

[Sarah Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't like this as much as the previous books. It seemed a bit silly. A book festival in which silly pranks are played on the authors? And they were silly. Dropping manure on one author's head, and having another run over by some pigs? Kinda lame.

So basically Esmerelda had killed a man and stolen his manuscript, which had then been published and made her very rich. There was a man (Max) going around the book festival trying to get one of the authors to read his manuscript, but he ended up dead, and the kids thought he'd been killed by Esmeralda and she'd stolen his manuscript like she did before. However, then Esmerelda turns up dead (after announcing that her new book is a western and completely different to her first book which was about vampires), and the kids realise that Esmerelda isn't her real name, and that her real surname is the same as one of the author's aides (Trevor)! Turns out that Esmerelda and Trevor are married. Esmerelda really did steal the first book and the second book too, but Trevor wasn't happy about how different the western book was. He killed Esmerelda to ensure the western was also a bestseller.

[Bethany Stradwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought the book was really good, the reason I didn't give it full stars was because at times I was finding myself a little bored but otherwise it's was a very hooking book and had many surprises.... I find myself always very surprised by the endings in this book and finding that I can't put these books down when I'm near the end and this is exactly what happened with this book.

[Tim horton · Rating 4 out of 5]

i think this is a great book whith a middle that keeps u intreged

[Riverina Regional Library]

Members of Riverina Regional Library reserve your copy now