Mischief at Midnight

April 15, 2016
Following The Girl with the Glass Bird (2015), orphan Edie solves another mystery at her English boarding school.There's a new girl at school, Janet, who has a wealthy, distant mother and a useless father. She displaces Edie's best friend, Anastasia, as roommate, with a clear message from the headmistress that Janet will need help transitioning. Unfortunately, Janet is not interested in adjusting--or even in staying at the school--and willfully flouts the rules, getting Edie into trouble. After some ferrets Anastasia's been given mysteriously disappear one night, some evidence points to Edie as the culprit, and she's ostracized by the others in her year, especially Anastasia. A few red herrings and Janet's odd comings and goings become secondary in the plot to Edie's growing sense of isolation from classmates, teachers, and relatives, a feeling she embraces a bit too readily. A strong British flavor pervades the tale, but most American readers will be familiar with the language and ideas from other imports. Nearly the entire story is from Edie's third-person point of view, but in one chapter the point of view switches to her uncle's. Although the setting is the same, and many of the presumably white, female characters are unchanged, the sense of claustrophobic intrigue is less effectively conveyed than in the first outing.Mildly mysterious but not quite suspenseful. (Mystery. 11-14)

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May 1, 2016

Gr 4-6-Almost a year after the dramatic events that ended Kerr's previous middle grade mystery, The Girl with the Glass Bird, things seem to have settled down at Knight's Haddon boarding school for orphan Edie Wilson and her best friend, the passionate, childlike, and spoiled Russian princess Anastasia Stolonov. The beginning of winter term brings upheavals, of course, as the two girls are forced to give up their shared room so that Edie can look out for a new girl (the reckless, bitter, worldly Janet Stone), and the school reels at the news that a nearby wood is to be sold and cut down. Edie is torn between Anastasia and the strangely appealing Janet, as well as her complicated relationship with the school's dictatorial headmistress, Miss Fotheringay. Schoolgirl spats, strange disappearances, and encounters with protesters attempting to stop the destruction of the woods seem to add up to more than the sum of their parts, and as the mystery builds and Edie's troubles increase, she might be the only person who can avert real danger. As in The Girl with the Glass Bird, Kerr creates an atmosphere more murky than mysterious-intriguing but ultimately unsatisfying. Those who haven't read the previous book may find themselves a little turned around despite authorial explanations. So much time is spent on red herrings and foreshadowing that the plot is alternately predictable and meandering, and character development also suffers. Kerr offers moments of thoughtful insight and some gothic-inspired shivers, but few plot twists or emotional moments feel truly earned.

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