I love Hazel Wong, who starts off as the Watson to Daisy Wells’ Holmes. I have loved A Murder Most Unladylike Mystery series since it was called A Wells and Wong Mystery series with the publication of Daisy and Hazel’s first murder mystery, A Murder Most Unladylike in 2014. Their status as children allows them to work unnoticed by their various suspects, at the same time as their detective work allows them to express their acute intelligence in ways forbidden by the suffocating conventions of school, enforced by teachers and students alike.

The ridiculousness of being both schoolgirl and detective – with Inspector Priestley, the series’ recurring police character, describing their lives at school as ‘an elaborate cover’ for their detective work – affords Hazel and Daisy the opportunity to act outside of the norms of both identities.

In doing so, they self-consciously overturn implicit and explicit hierarchies between adults and children, proving themselves to be more capable sleuths than professional police officers, as well as challenging other kinds of authority figures, especially parents and teachers. Robin Stevens, Death Sets Sail (London: Puffin, 2020)ĭaisy Wells and Hazel Wong, schoolgirl detectives in the late 1930s (the Golden Age of both Crime Fiction and School Stories), are repeatedly told not to be ridiculous: schoolgirls don’t solve murders! Across the nine books of Robin Stevens’ A Murder Most Unladylike Mystery series, though, Daisy and Hazel make the decision *to be ridiculous* and solve at least nine murder mysteries, as well as sundry lesser crimes.

Murder most unladylike series