A Pocketful of Eyes

Lili Wilkinson (author)

Allen&Unwin, Australia: May 2011; 311pp

ISBN: 9781742376196

Genres: adventure, crime, mystery, realistic fiction

Issues: friendship, identity

When Bee lands a job in the taxidermy department at the Museum of Natural History she is delighted. Her quiet, scientific job seems a different world to her mother's obsession with fantasy and role-playing games. But a dead man in the Red Rotunda, an unpleasant conservator, a mysterious recluse and the museum being short of funding set of Bee's internal alarm.

Working with the very handsome but thoroughly annoying med student who's also been taken on in taxidermy, Bee uses her expert knowledge to track down the killer. Well, that's the idea, but as her expertise is principally based on a long and intense interest in crime fiction, from Nancy Drew to Agatha Christie, Bee finds that real life is a little more difficult. Intelligence, persistence and research will only take her so far. The real question is WWPD? (What Would Poirot Do?)

A light-hearted murder mystery in an eccentric setting, A Pocketful of Eyes is Agatha Christie in a modern setting with a very bright teenage sleuth. Wry humour, oddball characters and plenty of minutiae for those who enjoy the more bizarre facts of life, A Pocketful of Eyes is an entertaining crime novel of the traditional, problem-solving genre – with a touch of romance. No blood but plenty of red herrings (or horseshoe crabs, in this case), a locked room with limited access to the key and a young, attractive, highly independent (bossy) girl detective: what more could young crime fans ask for?

Great fun.