On this day 24th June 1920 I turned fourteen. I plan to have a very exciting future now that I have thrown off the SHACKLES of SCHOOL! A detective is what I would most like to be. I cannot think of any reason why I could not be one. Except perhaps I am too young. And I don't like blood. Nancy Parker has recently been engaged in her first position - as a housemaid for the very modern Mrs Bryce. It's not Nancy's dream job (she'd rather be investigating crimes like they do in her beloved six-penny thrillers) but as Mrs Bryce starts to entertain her new neighbours with lavish parties, it becomes clear that something strange and interesting might be afoot. Local burglaries, a cook with a deep, dark secret - and Mrs Bryce's own glamorous but murky past. Will Nancy solve the mysteries while still keeping on top of her chores? A hilarious and energetic middle-grade mystery, narrated part in the third person and part through Nancy's journal.

 

There are 256 pages in this book. This is a journal. This book was published 2016 by Oxford University Press .

Julia Lee has been making up stories for as long as she can remember. She wrote her first book aged 5, mainly so that she could do all the illustrations with a brand-new 4-colour pen, and her mum stitched the pages together on her sewing machine. As a child she was ill quite a bit, which meant she spent lots of time lying in bed and reading (bliss!). Julia grew up in London, but moved to the seaside to study English at university, and has stayed there ever since. Her career has been a series of accidents, discovering lots of jobs she didn't want to do, because secretly she always wanted to be a writer. Julia is married, has two sons, and lives in Sussex.