Everyone loves a mystery
But not all stories of this genre have to be whodunits, Bernie Goedhart writes.
The Body Under the Piano
Marthe Jocelyn
Illustrated by Isabelle Follath
Tundra Books
Ages 10 and up
My parents had a bookcase in their bedroom that we kids knew was off limits unless we had Mom or Dad’s permission to read the books found there. I still remember the day my mother said I could try one of her Agatha Christie paperbacks. I was 11 or 12, wasted little time in plowing through her collection, and remember feeling proud that I was finally reading “adult” books after having honed my appetite with the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series. Today, of course, those Agatha Christie novels seem mild compared with some of the contemporary YA fiction kids are reading. There were plenty of dead bodies, true, but the methods of their demise were rarely graphic or gory. Poison was a favourite killer in those cosy mysteries, and the real trick was finding out whodunit. I was never very good at spotting the killer and to this day remain in awe of the deductive powers of Jane Marple and Hercule Poirot.
So when Marthe Jocelyn’s new novel — the first in a series about Aggie Morton, Mystery Queen — crossed my desk, I gave it a try — especially after seeing “Inspired by the real-life Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie” in tiny print on the cover. I was not disappointed. The author, who lives in Stratford, Ont., and has numerous children’s books to her credit, not only managed to write an engaging period piece (the novel is set in the seaside English town of Torquay in 1902) about likable characters, but she has succeeded in keeping the reader guessing throughout much of the 322-page novel. On Page 33, Aggie stumbles onto the body of Irma Eversham, a 44-year-old widow, stretched out under the legs of the piano in a dance studio, but it wasn’t until Page 234 that I finally started zeroing in on the person who, by Page 302, has emerged as the guilty party.
I wouldn’t be surprised if 12-year-old Aggie (short for Agatha) Morton and her friend Hector Perot, an odd but clever Belgian boy (!), capture the hearts of today’s young readers much the way Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys did the kids of my generation. And who knows? Maybe they’ll go on to seek out the Agatha Christie books that provided my mother and me with such happy hours of reading.
The Case of the Missing Auntie Michael Hutchinson
Second Story Press
Ages nine to 12
Book 2 in the Mighty Muskrats Mystery series, The Case of the Missing Auntie is not an Agatha Christie whodunit. The mystery here revolves around someone who was removed from her family and reserve in the Sixties Scoop, when Indigenous children were sent to residential schools and/or adopted out to white families. When Chickadee’s grandfather tells her about Charlotte, his little sister, who went missing decades earlier and for whom he has pined ever since, the girl enlists the rest of the Mighty Muskrats — her brothers Atim and Samuel, and her 11-year-old cousin Otter — to find out what happened to Charlotte and, hopefully, bring her back to Grandpa.
The Mighty Muskrats — first encountered in Book 1: The Case of Windy Lake — here travel from Windy Lake to the city, to take in the Exhibition Fair, try to help Otter score a ticket for his favourite rock band, Wovoka’s Wail, and help Chickadee track down information about Charlotte through the provincial adoption agency and the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.
Things don’t go smoothly. The boys pretty much mess up the first two objectives, but the third plan manages to answer a lot of questions about Charlotte’s fate — and delivered a surprising end to the story, one that left me envious of the close family ties Chickadee and the boys enjoy. In the process, I also learned some lessons about Indigenous values and beliefs, many of them uttered by elders like Grandpa.