The understated never-anywhere-near-budding romance between Hardcastle, Sr. I thought she was spectacular.”), and the small matter of unusual clues - a bath at the wrong time of day, a nightdress stained with pollen - and odd behaviour.Īmong the successes are the natural air given to Myrtle’s guilt when she accidentally pushes an easy suspect in front of the police, and her prosecutor father’s wrangling despite himself with evidence stacking up against a man that his trust of authority tells him must be correct and yet his personal revulsion at the idea rejects. At least then your murder mystery would have a murder and the mystery would begin in earnest, at which point Premeditated Myrtle becomes a lot of fun: sinister neighbours, night-time sojourns into enemy territory, a delightfully hilarious cat (“Peony perched beside me, serenading the dinner party with an undulating song of woe and betrayal.

…just that you can skip them and probably be no worse off. But for pity’s sake, you never heard anyone say, “What England really needs is more stupid girls.” Which is not to say that those hundred pages are without merit…ĭidn’t want me to be clever and inquisitive? I realize that intelligence wasn’t a highly regarded trait in the females of my species. And what’s doubly weird is Bunce’s own lack of confidence in establishing a milieu that’s already so over-familiar: sure, it’s interesting that Myrtle’s governess, Ada Judson, is from French Guiana, but even after we’ve observed the relationship between these two - Miss Judson being a firm encourager of Myrtle’s proclivities - the narrative is still weirdly stopped short for a page so that she can be “introduced” and we can be explicitly told most of what we’ve figured out anyway.

Those first hundred or so pages are hard going, since at no point does Bunce’s world establish itself as in any way different to exactly what you’d expect. ✔ Possessed of a remarkably early-21st Century attitude ✔ Frequently ignored by those who think they know better ✔ Nevertheless accompanied by an enabling adult presence ✔ Largely ignored by a disapproving parent It is 1893 - in the book, I mean, don’t panic - there are sixty-six elements in the periodic table, and Myrtle is frankly difficult to separate out from the countless other Young Person Detectives since she hits just about every trope going: Thankfully the unproved murder on which the entire book to that point has hung is finally suspected a few pages later and the book comes to life at last, but there’s an uncomfortably meta air to the criticism at the time. Bunce’s Premeditated Myrtle (2020) we learn that 12 year-old Myrtle Hardcastle starts reading novels in the middle because “beginnings were often boring”.

Myrtle hardcastle mysteries