First Class Murder

In the summer of 1935, Daisy and Hazel travel across Europe on the Orient Express with Hazel’s father. Their fellow first-class passengers include aristocrats, entertainers, businessmen and several people presenting themselves as detectives, while rumours suggest that an international spy is also aboard. A scream during dinner leads to a locked cabin, a murdered passenger and the disappearance of a valuable ruby necklace, apparently without any route by which the killer could have escaped.

The train gives the Detective Society a moving but tightly enclosed crime scene in which national borders, passports and social performance matter as much as footprints or alibis. Daisy and Hazel must work around adult rivals who regard them as children, and Hazel must manage her father’s determination to keep her safe. The novel adapts the conventions of Golden Age railway mysteries while using interwar travel to bring strangers, secrets and political suspicion into unavoidable proximity.