Daisy and Hazel are best friends at Deepdean School for Girls, a boarding school. It is 1934 and the wannabe detectives having set up their own secret detective club, the Wells and Wong detective society, and are desperate to solve a meaningful case.
A new teacher arrives at Deepdean, new music teacher Mr Reid. Upon his arrival there is chaos amongst the other teachers as they all find him deeply attractive. One of the teachers hands in their resignation which arouses Daisy and Hazel's suspicions. There are more strange goings on and a murder is committed that only the girls are aware of, piling on the tension and drama.
There is banter between the girls and sometimes I felt I didn't like Daisy. I felt sympathetic towards Hazel as Daisy is sometimes bossy and pushes her around which rings very true of domineering popular girls, but as the book progresses you understand these traits. Hazel by contrast has come from Hong Kong and has to get used to English customs and way of life. This is interesting to the plot, having an outsider's view of what is going on, and she narrates the story from this point of view.
The book has just enough complexity in the plot. The mystery is great, not knowing who to believe or trust. It is not hard to follow but keeps the reader guessing. I did not spot the murderer, not having an all too obvious killer amongst the relatively small number of suspects was a great page turner. I could relate to the girls chatting about their school sports and eating currant 'squashed fly' biscuits. This is a proper English feeling school crime setting with bags of charm. I gasped when the murderer confessed, which is just what you want from a book in this genre. I just wanted to keep reading, it was hard to put down. I would rate this book five out of five stars, I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it to readers 9-13 years.
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