Raised by a succession of ayahs, after the death of her distant parents, Isobel Petty is sent to England accompanied by the family of a military officer. Isolated by upbringing and personality, Isobel struggles to understand other human beings and takes an instant dislike to the very obviously likeable Letitia, and escapes as often as possible to wander imperceptibly on the deck. Early in the voyage, she realises she has overheard a murder, and hides under a lifeboat, only to find it occupied. Sam, the son of a work-focussed Indian doctor and scientist is fascinated by Sherlock Holmes, and he and Isobel, quickly joined by Letty, begin to investigate. However, they cannot report the “crime” because they are unable to identify anyone missing from the passenger list.
Set in the nineteenth century on a small cargo ship with only a limited number of paying passengers, this is an entertaining whodunit set in the context of ideas prevalent at the time; racism, snobbery, class tension, xenophobia and paternalistic attitudes are all raised by the way the passengers and crew interact, and the behaviour of the English upper class passengers in particular towards their servants, Sam, and Isobel, whose parents were English but who has a sallow complexion, dark hair and dark eyes, and whose clothing belies the colonial advantages of her now lost family. In addition, adult readers would probably recognise characteristics in Isobel that hint at autism. The children, whilst repeating some of the questionable attitudes of the adults that surround them, embrace their differences when they are together and exploit these in the course of their sleuthing, developing an understanding of each other and becoming friends, with even Isobel recognising that it is possible to like other people and appreciate their talents.
I would recommend this book to older Key Stage 2 readers and consider it as a class text. The mystery propels the plot, the characters are diverse and there are lots of issues to discuss that have a very contemporary resonance.

This murder mystery is set during the 19th century aboard the S.S. Marianna, a mail ship with a smaller number of passengers than a steam ship of the time. Isobel is an orphan who is travlleing from her home in India to live with a distant uncle in England. One night, she witnesses a victim being thrown overboard and this begins her hunt for the victim and criminal's identities. She makes alliences with her travel companion (Letitia) and Sameer (known in the book as Sam) and together they embark on solving the mystery.

There could be many discussion points raised in the classroom, whilst reading this book. I found Sam a very interesting character and would be interested to read follow up stories of his life, when he reached England.

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book is a historical novel about three children, Isobel, Letitia (Lettie) and Sameer (Sam), aged between ten and twelve, on a voyage on a mail boat from Calcutta to London in 1892. Isobel and Sam are sure that they have seen one passenger push another overboard at night in rough weather but none of the passengers appear to be missing. The three band together to try and solve the mystery.

At one level, the book is a classic murder mystery with plenty of red herrings and false trails along the way. However, the book is more about how the three children, all with very different personalities and family backgrounds, manage to relate to each other and work together. It is also about their relationship with adults, who sometimes hamper and sometimes unwittingly assist the solution to the crime.

This book was a lot of fun and kept me guessing. While not written in a way that could really allow the reader to figure out whodunnit, I think it works great for the target demographic and I liked the diversity and also how the author didn't include subtle racism and sexism etc. under the guise of "that's how things were" but included it AND challenged that idea. I think it's a great subtle way to say to kids that this stuff happened but also a good talking point for racism in today's world without the entire story revolving around it.

I also loved, towards the end, when Isobel says she thinks differently. I'm autistic and always look out for characters who could be autistic coded and Isobel definitely fits this. That whole little scene is something I'd expect to read in an actual autism book so to see it in a book that isn't (at least outwardly) autistic was great. It opens up the dialogue about being "different" in that same subtle way the other conversations arise and I just love that.

Books that are loud and proud about whatever topic are brilliant, but I also just love book where these characters get to just BE. I'll definitely be reading from this author again!

I LOVED this. Will be recommending to all my friends with kids of the right age or who want to sink into it themselves. Really enjoyed it.

Thank you Netgalley for this e-ARC.

Isobel, an orphan, is on the way from India to England. But what she didn't know that she got to face some unusual circumstances. Some new friends and a murder mystery is not what she had in her mind. It is a good read for children and world building was so interesting.

A really fun, engaging MG/YA adventure mystery perfect for modern day fans of The Secret Garden, The Famous Five and Harriet the Spy.

The Secret Detectives is a wonderful tale of friendship and detection set on board an 1890s mail boat sailing from India to England. It's an excellent piece of writing and is wholly engrossing. I read it in one sitting and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Ever wanted to know what happened before the events of The Secret Garden? Wonder no more ... this book fills in the details.

This book follows Isobel on her journey from India to start her new life with her uncle in England. On board, she is assigned to Mrs Hartington-Davies as her Ward. Instantly she takes a disliking to her daughter, Letitia, and sneaks out one night and meets Sam but they see something suspicious - someone being thrown overboard. Together, they decide to solve the mystery and get into such scrapes.

I’ll be honest, Isobel doesn’t come across as likeable as Sam. I loved Sam as a character. It also doesn’t ouch upon the blatant racism and ableism which is in The Secret Garden, which pleases me.

It is an enjoyable read but not necessarily the best example of a mystery based in that time.

In this new and exciting middle-grade mystery, Ella Risbridger takes us to a time and place full of complications – India under British rule. Though most of the story takes place on a mail ship headed to England, the tension and discrimination of the time still persists, especially with a central character being the son of an Indian man and an English woman, and the main character, though the daughter of English people, doesn’t seem to quite take after them in looks. Risbridger uses the setting very deftly to show the way people native to their country were belittled, ignored, and looked down upon in contempt by their colonisers, and this weaves in with the mystery that Isobel and her two friends must solve.

Isobel is a very interesting character. She has spent the first eleven years of her life alone, and now, being left an orphan, has to travel with a well-to-do English family and put up with their perfect daughter Letitia. She keeps a notebook in which she writes everything she observes, preferring to watch those around her and learn their rules rather than speak and join in with them. She’s the perfect mix of angry, observant, and hopeful, and I enjoyed reading this story from her perspective. Sam, the final in the detective trio, is also brilliant, and a joy to read. I have to say Risbridger did a tremendous job with writing these children, making them both complex and simple in the way only children are – seeing the world still as a just place where things happen the way they should, yet understanding that adults are fallible and life is complicated, and their own feelings might be as well.

The mystery itself I also found compelling. Usually, when reading a middle-grade detective story I tend to be able to predict the ending about half-way through because of the hints that a younger reader might not pick up on, but in the case of The Secret Detectives I must confess I was stumped until the last, and I enjoyed having the three detectives explain the solution to me. My one complains would be to say that, due to the nature of the setting, things can get a little repetitive. Being on a ship, there are fixed schedules, and the characters spend a lot of the time talking over hypothesis, then being called away to a meal, and then having to squirrel away a little bit of time before the next one comes around. The narrator does address this, though, and the children find it equally as frustrating that their time isn’t exactly their own, so it’s only a small complaint on my side.

Overall, a brilliant read that will appeal to younger readers as well as those, like me, who still like children’s books. It’s fresh while still building on a long-standing tradition of English detectives and history, and the characters are entirely original and fun.

I found this book a little hard to get into I think that the first few chapters could have been condensed. However once I got into the story it was really engrossing.

The three main characters are great, I like the character development with Lottie and Isobel and could understand where their flaws came from.

I loved the twist when the murder was solved and the mistakes Isobel, Sam and Lottie made along the way.

Set aboard a ship travelling from colonial India to the UK, The Secret Detectives centres on three children from very different backgrounds who become friends as they join together to solve a murder (witnessed by two of them) before the ship docks and the killer has a chance to escape … the problem is that nobody appears to be missing so who was the victim & who is the murderer?
11 yr old Isobel has been brought up in India. Following her parent’s deaths, she is travelling “home” to the UK, a country she has never seen before, to live with an uncle that she has never met. Travelling alone, Isobel must be chaperoned and this task has fallen to the very respectable Mrs. Colonel Hartington-Davis who is travelling with her two children. Mrs Hartington-Davis doesn’t appear to be very thrilled with the scruffy and rather ill-mannered child who prefers her own company, but perhaps Isobel will learn some refinement from 10 year old Letitia Hartington-Davis who is her opposite: a pretty, proper & very polite young lady. The third member of the “gang” is Sameer Khan, an Anglo-Indian boy travelling with his father

Although there were a couple of moments when I wasn’t sure if the author was mixing/confusing timelines (were we in the 1880s or the 1920s?) and what life aboard a colonial ship would really have been like, overall I did enjoy this book and the way that the characters developed. It may attract some negativity due to the tensions between the English/British and Indians during the colonial era but I think that the author did well to address the inequalities and the key characters being children from varied backgrounds allowed for some awkward questions to be asked and discussions to be had. Having Sam who called himself both English/British and Indian was a useful twist to help with this. I thought that the solving of the murder was well paced and well thought out with an appropriate level of mysterious clues, twists & turns and of course a few red herrings to counteract the assumptions being made!
This book is great for the 8-12 age group, but children a little younger could enjoy reading it with an adult and those w little older would still enjoy it as a quick read!
Disclosure: I received an advance reader copy of this book free via NetGalley. Whilst thanks go to the publisher for the opportunity to read it, all opinions are my own.
#TheSecretDetectives #NetGalley

It has been a long time since I have read a detective novel and so I was really happy to receive an e-arc copy of this book from NetGalley. I was really intrigued to read that this novel is inspired by the characters in the Secret Garden, and I could definitely feel the parallels, however you do not have to be familiar with the Secret Garden to read this.

I really like the setting of this book. I loved the descriptions of the ship and I could visualise the children running around on the decks and creating secret dens in the ships lifeboats.

The children discover a murder and spend their time on the ship trying to uncover the motive and the killer. They do so in a child-like way, which I really enjoyed. Sometimes they are messy and get things wrong and sometimes they over-look things. They have the advantage of being children which means they can get away with things that adults can not.

The children’s characters were really lovely, and they had such strong personalities. I could also visualise how they looked and acted. I particularly liked the character Sam who is very grown up and insightful. He gives Isobel such lovely advice and is very calm and kind. I loved it when he said ‘ you don’t have to like people more or less. You can just like them differently’. I found this really lovely. Sam helps bring Isobel and Lettie together and I really enjoyed them finding their friendships.

The charm to this book is the friendships which are discovered during the story. I really enjoyed coming along with them on their adventure. It would be lovely to find out what happened to the children after they disembark the ship!

The Secret Detectives is set on the SS Mariana and follows the journey of Isobel Petty who is orphaned and has to travel to England ( under the control of a Governess)to live with an uncle. One night whilst on deck she witnesses a murder and then ensues the investigations to solve the crime - accompanied by two new friends -Sam and Lettie. This curious trio endeavour to solve the whodunnit from a cast of curious characters on board the ship.
The story moves at a good pace as the trio try to eliminate possible suspects. Personality differences between the two girls adds friction and the empire attitudes of racism are evident ( but possibly not explored enough for readers of today).
The first three or four chapters are quite slow but stick with it as the story evolves .
An interesting addition to the children’s historical crime fiction genre. This could be an upper key stage 2 class text linked looking at historical themes and historical attitudes between heritage ,social position and hypocrisy.It could be a good text for children to keep notes on events themselves as they read the book and see if they can spot the clues and solve the crime before the three detectives ...good old retrieval and inference .

Taking inspiration from The Secret Garden and its main protagonist Mary Lennox, The Secret Detectives tells an exciting story about Mary’s, or in this case, Isobel’s journey from India to England.

Eleven-year-old orphan Isobel is a bit of misfit within society. Scruffy, ill-mannered, unloved and unappreciative, she is definitely not the kind of child that Mrs. Colonel Hartington-Davis would want to be escorting on a voyage from India to England. But this is exactly the situation that lady and child find themselves in. Being a minor, Isobel needs to be accompanied by a responsible adult on a journey to England to live with her uncle in Yorkshire.

Isobel would prefer to spend the trip alone and away from people but she is forced into a rather frosty friendship wth Letitia Hartington-Davis. And two quickly become three following a chance encounter with Sameer Khan - an eccentric young boy. When a terrible crime occurs in the middle of the night, the three children find themselves as the only witnesses and must join forces to try and bring the killer to justice before the ship docks and the killer has a chance to escape…

The Secret Detectives is an intriguing historical mystery set in the nineteenth century from a brand-new voice in children’s middle-grade fiction. This assured debut will hold much appeal to fans of the ever-expanding murder mystery genre for readers aged nine and over.

The action unfolds at a steady pace aboard the SS Marianna and largely flits between conversations under the lifeboat - the secret hideout and HQ of the Petty, Lettie and Khan Detective Agency - and meal-times in the dining room. With no-one reported missing and the captain confident that all of his passengers are accounted for the children definitely have their work cut out. As in all good mysteries, there are all manner of suspicious characters with their own secrets to hide and plenty of motives for murder. Add in twists, turns, red-herrings and the appearance of threatening hand-written notes and you’ve got al the ingredients for a murder mystery that will keep readers guessing right until the end.

In creating characters from vastly different backgrounds and with varying views of the society in which they exist, Risbridger is able to explore how background and upbringing has influenced their views on the colonial British rule of India. When the children are not conversing about the crime, they often have insightful talks as they discuss their place in wider society, the inequalities between the English and Indians and the disparity of the rich and their servants. These child views feel honest and the children do not hold back in the their opinions of society and people.

Despite their vastly different backgrounds, the children have much in common and themes of friendship, trust and teamwork are all central to the narrative. Although she would not admit it, friendship is particularly important for Isobel, who underneath her frosty exterior and unwelcoming demeanour is a child who really just wants to be accepted, appreciated and loved. There are some really heart-warming and touching moments as Isobel’s icy facade slowly begins to melt.

Really looking forward to seeing what Ella Risbridger does next, she is an exciting new voice in middle-grade fiction and definitely one to watch out for.

Recommended for 9+.

With thanks to Ella Risbridger and Nosy Crow for the advanced reader copy that was received through NetGalley.

I really struggled to get into this book and pay attention throughout (I put it down about 5 chapters in and had a nap for a bit, because I just wasn't drawn in). I think a lot of my problem was how I reacted to the start because it simply failed to engage me.

For one, the book begins with an epigraph from THE SECRET GARDEN, and then the main character pretty much feels like Mary Lennox. Isobel has just been orphaned, having grown up isolated in India. She's being sent home to live with her uncle in a big house.

It very much feels like the inspiration for this book was "what if Mary Lennox had to solve a mystery on her way to England?" An inspiration like that is no bad thing - all books have to start somewhere, and a "what if" is a common idea. However, it all felt so similar, down to some of the things she recalled about India.

Isobel is a very unlikeable characters. She's very mean and dismissive. She doesn't like people, or want friends - preferring to be by herself. Now, I'm an introvert, so I get that, but the judgments and comments she made about people were really nasty, particularly her bickering with Letitia (daughter of the woman looking after her.) Some of that can be explained by her grief, but there was just wasn't a single "nice" characteristic about her, something that made me like her. She also was adamantly anti-book ("I don't like books and I won't read") throughout, which is not going to get any book lovers on side!

The start was also quite slow to read through, full of long sections of backstory or description of the people and ship. Isobel was simply observing them, or recalling ideas. As she wasn't doing anything and had no goals, there was little forward momentum to start the story rolling.

After a while, I found the story easier to get into, and the mystery was a lot of fun, but I still felt very much on the outside (and wanting Isobel to be at least a tad more civil to those around her.) The clues and red herrings made for an interesting knot for the heroes to solve.

I like all the characters and the setting in this book. I like how the author touched on racism; beautifully made! It was a joy to read about the value of individuals against all the social injustices. But I thought the story was a bit too slow.

The Secret Detectives is an entertaining mystery novel with an intriguing setting.
Isobel Petty is an orphan on her way from India to England to live with an uncle she's never met.
The whole of the action happens on board the mail ship, as not long into her journey she witnesses a murder on deck. Isobel then teams up with a young boy called Sam who dreams of owning his own newspaper one day, and Lettie, the girl whose family Isobel is traveling with, to unravel the mystery.
Overall I found the book enjoyable enough for a lazy afternoon read, and I didn't guess the murderer. However I did find that I didn't like any of the characters. I also found some of the dialogue a bit repetitive and would have preferred a bit more 'atmosphere' rather then heavy dialogue.
It was still an entertaining read though.

A cold-hearted murder is unexpectedly observed by three children who, despite their varied backgrounds and personalities, become friends as they join together to solve the mystery of who was the victim and who was the murderer on a ship where there appears to be nobody missing!

Firstly, I really enjoyed the three central characters - the development of their friendship in particular. Isobel starts of as quite an abrasive character due to being largely left to her own devices by her parents when they were alive and being unsure how to 'play' and be a 'friend' due to never having had other children to play with. Her appearance is untidy and this makes her problematic in the eyes of the well-dressed coiffed women of society, namely Letitia's mother. Letitia, in comparison, is everything Isobel is not and she knows it. However, underneath she displays the ability to use her 'prettiness' to her advantage and shows great pluck. Sameer is a character I loved for his grand use of words, his creation of an 'office' under the lifeboat, yet he also demands sympathy due to his family circumstances and his father who prioritises his work.

Set during colonial times, I felt the author dealt sympathetically with the tensions between the English and Indians, the wealthy and the servants. There was an honesty about the inequalities that existed at this time and, due to the characters being children, there was a lot of open discussion about race and place in society. The fact that Sam identified as both English and Indian was helpful and these conversations helped Isobel and Lettie to question their assumptions.

The solving of the murder was well thought out with twists, turns, mysterious clues and some red herrings - I was certainly gripped! The pacing overall was good, and whilst the characters did attend mealtimes often on the boat, I feel this was a significant place for observing potential murderers and was necessary for the plot.

I really enjoyed this and hope that the three of them return in another adventure soon! Thanks to NetGalley and NosyCrow books for the chance to read and review before publication. All opinions are my own.

The Secret Detectives is a charming middle-grade murder mystery, inspired by The Secret Garden and golden-age crime fiction.

The detective work may be a little muddled, but the central crime makes for an engaging mystery. Risbridger's writing is spirited and self-assured. 'Petty, Lettie and Khan' are a fantastic trio, each vivid characters in their own right, and I enjoyed watching their friendship develop. There are some real heart-felt moments of connection and understanding amongst the heists and surprises, as Risbridger sensitively explores themes of family, friendship and colonialism.

Pairing classic children's literature with crime fiction makes for a winning combination; The Secret Detectives is a promising debut.