Kieran Crowley Books

Lashings of ginger beer may have been replaced by smart phones, but the premise of children relying on their own resourcefulness to solve mysteries and put right criminal wrongdoings holds a timeless appeal in children’s literature. What we liked especially about this narrative was the impending sense that this was ‘one last adventure’ for the club before they move on to other things. Along with various hints throughout the story about dawning adolescence, the characters all seem in their own ways to be sitting on a threshold between clinging onto childhood status and wishing to be taken seriously like adults. Many readers in upper Key Stage 2 will find the frustrations of the “tween” stage to be entirely relatable. Kieran Crowley has perfectly captured the notion of the characters feeling torn between hoping for ‘one last adventure’ in childhood and also being ready to move on to a more mature phase.