Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British and Irish - reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British and Irish themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!
Last week, I wrote the thirteenth installment about following the story of Brexit - all about the election of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister.
Book: The Case of the Perilous Palace by Jordan Stratford
Genre: Middle grade mystery
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Publication date: 2018
Pages: 186
Source: ebook borrowed from the library
Summary: Ada Lovelace is under virtual house-arrest by her grandmother for unladylike behavior. A detective agency, indeed! What kind of thing is that for a young girl to be engaged in?
Grandmother's opinion changes, though, when Ada gets a summons to Kensington Palace to visit Alexandrina Victoria, the future Queen of England.
Thoughts: This is the fourth, and most recently published, book in The Wollstonecraft Detective Agency series featuring the fictional adventures of two real historical heroines - Ada Lovelace (theoretically, the first computer programmer) and Mary Godwin (who grows up to be the author Mary Shelley).
I enjoyed the first novel in the series in January: The Case of the Missing Moonstone. The next two books, The Case of the Girl in Grey and The Case of the Counterfeit Criminals, were also fun. But, I think this one, The Case of the Perilous Palace, is my favorite.
I've been fascinated with Queen Victoria's odd upbringing since I saw the film Young Victoria and the first season of Victoria (Ada Lovelace makes an appearance in my review of that).
John Conroy is the real life bad guy of Victoria's youth. He's amusingly portrayed in The Case of the Perilous Palace as a man who speaks in malapropisms, much to the dismay of Ada who reflexively stops everything to correct him. I also enjoyed the righteous indignation of our two strong female characters to the way that the princess is treated.
I don't see any evidence that a fifth book is in the works. Jordan Stratford's website, however, mentions that there's a television series in production based on this series. That's something to look forward to!
Appeal: This series will appeal to kids (and adults) who like science, history, or mystery. And, especially those who like them all wrapped up together. I predict the readers of this series will grow up to read Neal Stephenson's giant novels.
Have you read this book? What did you think?
About Joy Weese Moll
a librarian writing about books
