Kate on the Case

Kate is excited: she’s travelling on a very fancy train with her dad and her pet mouse, Rupert, to go and see her scientist mum in the North Pole. Yet, at breakfast on day one, Miss Bonbon announces that someone has stolen all 16 of her gymnastics trophies, the priest is missing some ancient scrolls, and Simon, the Conductor-in-training, is missing three packets of ginger nut biscuits, taken from underneath his bunk. Disaster!

Luckily, Kate, a wannabe Special Correspondent, is on the case. After interviewing her fellow passengers, in accordance with her hero Catherine Rodriguez’s Special Correspondent Manual, she suspects the rather difficult Madame Maude – but is she correct? And why would anyone steal such a strange assortment of items?

Hannah Peck’s super-creative joy of a book has mystery, humour, brilliant illustrations and a veritable smorgasbord of puns and wordplay. It’s guaranteed to entertain and delight fans of Alex T Smith’s Mr Penguin series or Chris Riddell’s Goth Girl books, which also have that same level of sometimes rather grown-up allusion and language.

It’s lovely that Kate is an aspiring investigative journalist and the rhyming tiger in the last section of the book is a delightful addition.