Murder is Bad Manners

 
Murder is Bad Manners

by Robin Stevens
Simon & Schuster

2014, reprinted 2015

 

 

Murder is Bad Manners is a YA mystery and the first book of a series following 1930s British boarding school students Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong. It was originally published in England under the title Murder Most Unladylike.

 
Daisy is the daughter of a lord, allegedly the niece of a spy, the most popular girl in school, and someone whose public persona is very much a performance to please others. Hazel is the daughter of a businessman living in Hong Kong who gets shipped off to bolster her father's status, Daisy's more shy and less spectacular tag-along best friend, and the narrator of the book. They are secretly members of the two-person 'Wells & Wong Detective Society,' and they have an explicit Holmes and Watson style relationship, which is why Hazel keeps the case notes and tells us the story.

 
We get thrown straight into the deep end - the first chapter tells us about Hazel finding the dead body of Miss Bell, which then vanishes before she can show anyone, and introduces us to a veritable cavalcade of teachers (suspects) and fellow students (unwitting informants.) 

 
Daisy believes Hazel about the body, and the two of them are the only ones who know that Miss Bell has been murdered and that her resignation letter is a phony. A lot of the initial investigation has Daisy getting ideas for what to do next, and quite literally dragging Hazel along with her as she runs about the school - which seems to be pretty typical of their friendship generally.

 
Partway through, Daisy is convinced she knows what happened, while Hazel thinks they don't know the full story, and they fight when Hazel stands up for herself. Then their lead suspect dies too, meaning that Hazel was right ... and Daisy admits it. She still runs about tugging Hazel by her side, but also tries to be more humble about her ideas, and to treat Hazel more as a friend and less as a sidekick after that.
 

Eventually they figure out the full truth, and alert the police who are looking into the 'accidental death' of the second teacher. The police confront the killer using Daisy and Hazel's evidence while the two girls peek through a door. They get the satisfaction of being right, and justice is served.

 
This was fun and well-paced, with most chapters running only a few pages, and a division into parts providing a bit more structure. Daisy is an absolute dynamo, like Finny or Gatsby, while Hazel is someone I suspect more readers can see a bit of themselves in. I liked how much of the investigation happened via Daisy questioning her classmates under the guise of various popular girl activities. And I liked that 'Holmes' isn't right initially, and 'Watson' saves the day by finding the strength to stand up to her friend as an equal.

 
I also like that Hazel doesn't really romanticize the British boarding school life. Like the reader, she's an outsider to it, and is both appalled by some aspects and maybe more sympathetic to other parts than the girls who are 'from' that world. One suspect is an unfashionable short-haired woman who used to be roommates with Miss Bell until Miss Bell started dating the handsome new male teacher - I think Hazel understands what's up there and doesn't judge. 

 
Hazel also observes how many girls have 'pashes' (TOTALLY platonic, no-homo friend crushes) on Daisy, and again, I think Hazel gets that at least sometimes, a pash involves feelings that are only socially acceptable because everyone involved treats those feelings as less than serious and less than real.