The Beanstalk Murder
For ages 9+
Exciting, a bit giggly, cryptic and pacy. It’s a full blown fairy tale adventure, with musical mayhem and magical mischief. Plus, there are more red herrings than you can shake a solid gold giant treble clef cuff link at!!
By P.G. Bell, illustrated by George Ermos (Usborne Books, 2024)
Which was your favourite once upon a time story growing up? Jack and the Beanstalk was definitely one of my favourites with golden eggs and an enchanted harp. Bestselling Children’s author, P.G. Bell has had huge success with his ‘The Train to Impossible Places’ (Usborne, 2018-2021) series - a fave of my daughter’s.
I was absolutely delighted to receive a proof of this new adventure as this author has been missed as one of the great magical adventure writers of books with wit, imagination and suspense for middle grade.
What a brilliant concept though. A murder mystery following all the traditional plot developments - detecting, discovering a body, looking for a murder weapon, witnesses, suspects, and motive - it’s all here in spades. However to take a veritable Agatha Christie style whodunit and wrap it up in a post human vs giants fairy tale world war is super genius.
Meet girls, Anwen and Cerys, who live in a rural village called Old Stump. Can you guess why? Yep! It’s the original site of the ACTUAL beanstalk - now chopped down for the sake of peace following an all out war between humans and giants, all because of that naughty thieving Jack!!
Cerys and Anwen are not exactly the best of friends (well at the beginning of the book anyway). Whilst Cerys has managed to get into the Academy of High Magic, Anwen hasn’t, and this has led to some rivalry between them, and some rather petty oneupwomanship that might or might not involve Anwen speaking to her seagull mate Colin (for she has a witch talent of communicating with animals, birds etc) and asking it to poop on Cerys at any given opportunity… (Note to self not to get on the wrong side with Anwen, as living by the sea might mean absolute bird plop blizzards!)
Anwen, a Meadow Witch (apprentice), so reminds me of a gutsy Alice from Wonderland… a little stubborn, but brave, caring and accepting, and a little naive, but with it all comes adventure, cleverness and curiosity.
Readers, there’s nothing like a major event, a catastrophic emergency to bring people to their senses. The ‘CerWen’ nonsense has to pause suddenly as out of the sky, from the Sky Kingdom above, falls a DEAD BODY OF A GIANT!!!!!!!!!! The village is crushed and thanks to the magic spells cast by villagers, no-one is killed, only injured. O.M.G.
You’ll be interested to know that any child with an interest in the slightly macabre will love that as a Meadow Witch, Anwen is very used to seeing dead bodies, because one of the services she and her Grandmother perform is preparing the dead for burial. She’s almost forensic in her methods, fantastic at finding clues, and this is going to be very useful in solving the MURDER CASE!! The way she examines the body (fully clothed and in situ, don’t worry)… I’m thinking CSI for kids!! Pretty cool actually.
In trying to notify, extremely diplomatically, via a letter delivered by beanstalk, the giants in the Sky Kingdom that one of theirs had dropped through rather dead, Cerys and Anwen accidentally end up accompanying said message to come face to face with actual living giants. Yikes!! After discovering that the body is in actual fact the King’s, and observing the courtiers, especially the King’s sister-now-Queen, Anwen is desperate to solve the murder, and she’s got a perfect ally in Captain - a kindly giant, who is himself in charge of solving the case for the new Queen.
Imagine the tiny Cerys and Anwen, minute in a giant’s world, it’s not going to be easy to survive, let alone accomplish dangerous detective work. There’s a killer on the loose still after all… and cats. Cosy in their royal dolls house, the girls are forced to appreciate each other’s different strengths and skills, whether it’s casting a spell to increase the volume of their tiny voices so Captain can hear them, or talking to the mice to take them through tunnels to explore rooms at night for clues, or to commandeer highly comical pigeons with high aspirations to look for elusive witnesses. Now isn’t the time for bird droppings revenge. It’s time to work together, which means that they might actually become friends at this rate.
Will this trusty team of giants and humans solve the mystery of the murdered King, an unlikely guitar playing fiend, before the assassin strikes again? And, can they save the peace treaty in time!! More to the point, do you think you’ll guess who the murder is before the big reveal? I’m not so sure you will, which is a good thing and adds to the fun of the WOW NO WAY at the end.
Beneath the glamour… who is really better than whom? Underneath it all are two girls coming from kind and humble families who just want to make their way in the world. Comparing ourselves to each other can be disastrous, and children of this age are full of all sorts of anxieties and insecurities. Natural talents are not to be scoffed at or ashamed of because of envy of another’s!!
‘The Beanstalk Murder’ is exciting, a bit giggly, cryptic and pacy. It’s a full blown fairy tale adventure, with musical mayhem and magical mischief. Plus, there are more red herrings than you can shake a solid gold giant treble clef cuff link at!!
I’m glad there’s more to come from P.G. Bell with his murderous twisted fairy tale middle grades. Very enjoyable Summer holiday read indeed.
P.S. Here’s one of Anwen’s Folk Magic spell incantations in Welsh…
“Glöyn Byw, Glöyn Byw, rwy’n dy weld di, dere ataf i.” - no guarantees of it working though, ahem. Perhaps apologise to any nearby pixies in advance…
