When it comes to the Myrtle Hardcastle Mysteries, I’ve thrown objectivity out the window. I adored Premeditated Myrtle and am predisposed to love all successive Myrtle mysteries. And so, I opened Cold-Blooded Myrtle this week with great expectations.

And great expectations were met.

Yes: the bodies, the clues, the red herrings - they all accumulate with delicious opacity according to author Elizabeth C. Bunce’s diabolical plan, but what I especially enjoyed about the third novel in this series, is the emotional tension regarding Myrtle’s dead mother. To what extent was her mum a party to the tragic disappearance of a college student in the past? Right from the start Myrtle is caught between wanting to detect, but fearing what she may discover about her mother. For Myrtle - and for the reader - the emotional stakes have never been higher.

But we had no time to wonder further, for at that moment, from inside the shop erupted a bone-rattling scream. -Ch. 1

Cold-Blooded Myrtle is a delightful, erudite middle-grade mystery with a cracking ending. There’s archaeology, maps, model-making, music, patchwork, poison, secret societies, and more helpings of Stansberry Pie - when are we going to get a recipe for this, Dear Author?

Once again Cold-Blooded Myrtle is stuffed full of literary heroes: Doctor Belden is a nod to the Trixie Belden books, and we have characters and place names called Maurier, Swinburne, Shelley, Hardy, Wodehouse, and Hobbes. Socrates, Dickens, Sherlock Holmes, and Ann Radcliffe are also referenced as themselves.

The door stuck, and a dry musty smell crept up from the gloom when I yanked hard, revealing a deep cavern of black. - Ch. 5

Set at the cusp of the twentieth-century, with all its thrilling discoveries in science, forensics, travel, and detection, the Myrtle Mysteries stand out for their strong female characters. Miss Judson the governess, practically perfect in every way, is only one of several intelligent, brave, robust women. In this novel, investigative newshound Imogen Shelley and archaeologist Nora Carmichael exemplify derring-do. Only Mr Blakeney falters: from being a whizz legal clerk and wit in Premeditated Myrtle, he’s becoming something of a fool.

But of all the characters here, it is twelve-year-old Myrtle who shines brightest. Her distinct, precocious voice, sharp mind, scientific vocabulary, and delightfully morbid curiosity mark her as a winning and worthy heroine. Five stars!

Many thanks to Elizabeth C. Bunce and Algonquin Young Readers for my advanced reading copy. It was capital.

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