Stevens’ writing is such a delight that she managed to suck me in entirely, and I pushed aside all disbelief. Best friends Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong find themselves at the heart of a murder investigation when Hazel discovers the body of a teacher in the school gym. Two instances of “bloody” as a British swear word, with Hazel commenting on how shocked she is that a teacher uses the word.

Murder Most Unladylike: A Murder Most Unladylike Mystery Murder Most Unladylike: A Murder Most Unladylike Mystery

in the series time frame, I think it is the perfect place to start if you want to get a taste for the style and content. It’s a blend of historical novel – set in the early 30s in a boarding school for girls – and old-school detective novels a la Sherlock Holmes.

And YET: I equally seem to always find myself navigating toward these books and reading them anyway because Girls! Also, I had no idea Hazel wasn’t white (am now squinting at the cover), so I’m doubly excited to read it someday. Exactly,' snapped my mother, and for the next week she refused to speak anything but Cantonese in protest.

Murder Most Unladylike Series by Robin Stevens - Goodreads

Robin was born in California and grew up in an Oxford college, across the road from the house where Alice in Wonderland lived. There's only one problem: they can't find anything to investigate apart from silly little mysteries like why does Lavinia's tie vanish?

But when fellow passenger, Mrs Daunt, is brutally murdered and her diamonds stolen, Hazel and Daisy instinctively swing into action. Daisy has lost her crown to a fascinating new girl - and many of the Detective Society's old allies are now their sworn enemies. Amid the not-so-secret drinking and serial romance on the faculty, a few adults we'll probably be seeing in future series installments show unexpected strengths. When Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong set up their very own deadly secret detective agency, they struggle to find any truly exciting mysteries to investigate.

Once Upon a Crime by Robin Stevens | Goodreads Once Upon a Crime by Robin Stevens | Goodreads

The evolution of that relationship is something that will be interesting to follow in future instalments. Daisy and Hazel think baby Teddy is enough to deal with, but as always the girls are never far from a mystery. The story is written in the style of a casebook and follows two fictional boarding schoolgirl detectives, Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong, as they try to find the murderer of their science teacher.Fresh from their adventure in Hong Kong, Hazel Wong and Daisy Wells are off to the Rue Theatre in London to face an entirely new challenge: acting. Verity forbids this fact, but Miss Griffin then provides her with evidence of her birth and the adoption, too. Set in 1934, Murder Is Bad Manners offers lots of mini-epiphanies about period culture (for example, Hazel talks about the freezing, Spartan dorm and explains, "In England, the way of showing that you are very rich is to pretend that you are very poor and cannot afford things like heating or new shoes") and prejudice (a teacher's explanation of why she had to lie to get the job she's very good at). After finding a dead body, which then disappears, the girls are racing to stay one step ahead and solve the clues. There are burdens put on the girls that relate to their gender, to the sort of good behaviour that is expected of them (actually part of the murder investigation in more ways than anticipated) and to how intelligent and smart they are allowed to be.