A 2021 Edgar(R) Award Winner, Best Juvenile
A BookPage Best Book of 2020: Middle Grade
A Mighty Girl's 2020 Books of the Year
Introducing Myrtle Hardcastle, your favorite new amateur detective: a
wickedly smart twelve-year-old with a keen interest in criminology and a
nose for murder in Victorian England.
Twelve-year-old Myrtle Hardcastle has a passion for justice and a Highly
Unconventional obsession with criminal science. Armed with her father's
law books and her mum's microscope, Myrtle studies toxicology, keeps
abreast of the latest developments in crime scene analysis, and Observes
her neighbors in the quiet village of Swinburne, England.
When her next-door neighbor, a wealthy spinster and eccentric breeder of
rare flowers, dies under Mysterious Circumstances, Myrtle seizes her
chance. With her unflappable governess, Miss Ada Judson, by her side,
Myrtle takes it upon herself to prove Miss Wodehouse was murdered and
find the killer, even if nobody else believes he --not even her father,
the town prosecutor.
With sparkling wit and a tight, twisty plot, Premeditated Myrtle, the
first in a series from an award-winning author, introduces a brilliant
young investigator ready to take on hard cases and maddening Victorian
rules for Young Ladies of Quality in order to earn her place among the
most daring and acclaimed amateur detectives of her time or any other.