Who is your favourite literary detective?

Murder At The Museum

Written by: Alastair Beckett-King @MisterAbk

Illustrated by: Claire Powell @misspowellpeeps

Published by: Walker Book @WalkerBooksYA @WalkerBooksUK

Published on: February 2023

Price: £7.99

First line: It always seemed to be dusk inside the Hornville Museum.

Genre: Mystery

Age: 9+

Thanks to @imaginecentre for the review copy, and the full review can be read on their website.

What’s it all about? Young girl, Bonnie Montgomery, turns (Superman style) into super sleuth and highly celebrated (by a couple of people in his family) Montgomery Bonbon in order to solve a gruesome murder in a local museum that she just happens to be visiting.

The story’s protagonist, Bonnie, and her Grampa, team up together again (even though this is their first book) to solve the possibly unsolvable crime (by the police at least) of the murder of Oliver Munday (museum security guard) and the disappearance of the museum’s prize artefact, the stone Widdlington Eagle.

Why should I read it? This is a ‘classic’ locked room mystery with a small set of suspects (beautifully drawn at the front of the book). The story, written by a professional comedian, has a very unashamedly tongue in cheek approach to detective fiction, which could be argued is great for the age range the book is aimed at: 9-11 year olds. The style is reminiscent of the style of ‘Carry On’ films or David Walliams books. Full of wit, whimsicalness and wonder, this story twists and turns through the short list of suspects like a visitor to the museum itself. Bonnie’s out loud musings help her, and the reader, to piece together each clue on the path to finding the guilty one. The reader will be changing their mind as to ‘whodunit’ with every turn of the page! She epitomises grim determination though by never giving up in her quest for the truth even though she is attacked, given negative reviews and finds talking to some people difficult. Grampa Banks is the only person who knows of her deep, dark secret. This could inevitably lead to danger, especially when Bonnie goes out at night to investigate. She does have her Grampa with her, but he falls asleep and she is a young girl out at night. The police, as often in detective stories, are represented as bumbling fools, and this doesn’t give children an accurate representation of the detectives in the real world. 

I think this would make a good addition to a school library. The style of writing and the illustrations make it engaging and easy to read. It would be best for ages 9-11 due to some of the content – murder, poison and social dilemmas. As a classic detective story it could be studied as a guided reading book with a view to looking at the key structure and success criteria of a murder mystery: maps, locked rooms, suspects, detective etc. Then this could be compared to other similar stories to use as a model for writing a detective story. But I feel it would be better as a reading for pleasure book in the school library as a gateway to other great murder mystery books.