Murder Most Unladylike by Robin Stevens (Wells & Wong, Book 1)
Corgi, 2014
316 page, paperback
*Borrowed from the library
One of the requirements for this year's Read Harder challenge is to read a middle-grade book, something written for the 8-12 age group. Not a category of books that I know a great deal about, beyond an inkling that Harry Potter falls into it (at least at first) and probably all those Enid Blyton and E. Nesbitt books I read when I was a kid. I wandered into the children's library at work to grab something, feeling a bit self conscious on my lunch hour, while a colleague sang 'The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round' to a group of toddlers behind me. But I found it quite difficult to pick for myself. I asked one of our children's specialists for advice about where to start; she asked me right back what my favourite book was when I was eight. It was, without a doubt, First Term at Malory Towers by Enid Blyton. I loved the heroine Darrell Rivers so much - with her keen and earnest desire to be liked at the same time as being a good person - that I followed her to University of St Andrews when the time came. I even made a handwritten copy of it and stashed it in a carrier bag in the garage, just in case my paperback was ever lost in a house fire. (Yes, really. I sat at the kitchen table for weeks after school and wrote it out word for word. Go ahead, judge me.)
My colleague took this information and ran with it straight to Murder Most Unladylike by Robin Stevens. All credit to her, she knows her stuff. I loved it to bits; it was such a delightful romp of an opener to the Wells and Wong Mystery series. It introduces us to Daisy Wells, the founder and President of the Wells & Wong Detective Society, and Hazel Wong, her best friend and Society Secretary. They are both third-formers at Deepdean School, looking down on the first and second years (the 'shrimps') and muddling their way through the social etiquette of a 1930s boarding school life of lacrosse, midnight feasts and bunbreaks. It's a complex affair, even without the detecting thrown in. Daisy is a paragon of an English schoolgirl: blond, bright, privileged, sporty and extravagantly confident. When Hazel first sees her - playing hockey in a rain storm - she recognises her like a character out of a book:
Her hair was falling out of its plaits chaotically and her eyes were extremely blue, and although the rest of England was not exactly turning out as I expected, here, at least, was one English ideal - my golden-haired friend come to life; a person absolutely made from the England of my books and paintings.
Hazel is Chinese, from Hong Kong, sent to Deepdean in a fit of one-up-manship on her father's part, and stands out in all the worst ways. When she first arrived at the school she was subjected to a steady low-grade bullying that made fun of her appearance, her clumsiness in games; her eagerness to do well in class. Against all the odds though she and Daisy become friends, and then best friends. They see something in one another that transcends their differences. Not kindred spirits as such. Something better, something with the flavour of reality.
Theirs is a symbiotic relationship. By which I mean: not particularly equal. It isn't always kind either. Daisy is the Sherlock to Hazel's Watson, with all the baggage that entails. While Hazel - who acts as our narrator - is warm, empathetic, fearful, cautious, Daisy is driven, detached, sparkly but cold. It sets up the familiar dynamic in their relationship: the sharp-eyed genius and their doe-eyed sidekick. The best thing about Murder Most Unladylike is that it doesn't let this cliche harden and mature. Straightaway Stevens' points up the way Daisy and Hazel's friendship confirms privilege at the same time as overcoming it. Daisy is Deepdean's golden girl, able to walk between many worlds, condescending to flatter the caretaker in one breath, charming the Head Girl (who happens to be some kind of distant cousin) in another. She is the daughter of an Earl, and has a mysteriously well connected Uncle. She can get away with being Hazel's friend unscathed, in spite of Hazel's outlandish difference, because she has a surplus of social cache. Inevitably this means that their friendship has a touch of patronage about it, and they both have clear roles to play. It's articulated on the first page: Daisy Wells is the President of the Detective Society, and I, Hazel Wong, am its Secretary. Daisy says that this makes her Sherlock Holmes, and me Watson. This is probably fair. After all, I am much too short to be the heroine of this story, and who ever heard of a Chinese Sherlock Holmes?
How can your heart not crack a bit reading that? Daisy repeatedly puts Hazel in this position, of denigrating herself - silencing her when she has an idea, dragging her into situations she feels uncomfortable with - and it would make me angry if it weren't for the fact that Hazel has a secret power over Daisy. She knows (like Watson knows, at least in the modern interpretations of Doyle's stories) that Daisy is all carapace, and that without Hazel she would be completely, completely alone. To the world it might look as though Hazel is dependent on Daisy, but we learn it's actually the other way around. It doesn't fix their inequality in the outside world, but it does balance their friendship. It's so compelling to watch the way they share and compete for power and influence during the course of the mystery, repeatedly renegotiating the terms of their deal with each other. And it's lovely to see the moments of ecstatic understanding they share when the mystery is solved.
Which reminds me that I'm doing this review back to front. I've gone on and on about the characters and said very little about the mystery at the book's heart. It has a great premise. Running back to the gym to grab a lost sweater at the end of the day Hazel comes upon the body of Deepdean's science mistress Miss Bell, sprawled on the floor beneath a balcony with a bloody wound to her head. She races find Daisy and bring help, but when they get back to the scene of the crime minutes later the body is gone and in the morning Miss Bell's resignation letter is found on the headteacher's desk. With no body and an apparently good reason for her disappearance, no one but Hazel and Daisy believe that Miss Bell has in fact been killed. The Wells and Wong Detective Society has it's first murder case. The plot twists back and forth with the girls trying to establish which of the teachers - they think it has to be one of them - had motive and if they have alibis. In the process they uncover jilted lesbians, secret engagements, identity theft and alcoholism, before arriving at the shocking conclusion and the danger of confronting the culprit. It's deliciously tense at times. But what I liked most about the plot was the way that the murder acted as a lens for Daisy and Hazel to discover and begin to understand the morally fraught world of adult life. Although the masters and mistresses are, at first, cliches in the school stories tradition they end (mostly) as individuals dealing with their own problems.
I'm so pleased to have read this - I almost certainly wouldn't have if not for the Read Harder challenge and the great people I work with - and am desperately eager for the second book, Arsenic for Tea, to come back to the library for me.
~~Victoria~~