Review: The Body under the Piano by Marthe Jocelyn

The Body under the Piano
by Marthe Jocelyn; illustrated by Isabelle Follath

Available as: hardcover, Kindle edition
Pages: 336
Publisher: Tundra Books
Publication date: February 2, 2020
Suggested tags: middle grade, historical fiction, mystery
Series: Aggie Morton, Mystery Queen (#1)



From the publisher:

"A smart and charming middle-grade mystery series starring young detective Aggie Morton and her friend Hector, inspired by the imagined life of Agatha Christie as a child and her most popular creation, Hercule Poirot. For fans of Lemony Snicket and The Wollstonecraft Detective Agency.

Aggie Morton lives in a small town on the coast of England in 1902. Adventurous and imaginative but deeply shy, Aggie hasn’t got much to do since the death of her beloved father . . . until the fateful day when she crosses paths with twelve-year-old Belgian immigrant Hector Perot and discovers a dead body on the floor of the Mermaid Dance Room! As the number of suspects grows and the murder threatens to tear the town apart, Aggie and her new friend will need every tool at their disposal — including their insatiable curiosity, deductive skills and not a little help from their friends — to solve the case before Aggie’s beloved dance instructor is charged with a crime Aggie is sure she didn’t commit.

Filled with mystery, adventure, an unforgettable heroine and several helpings of tea and sweets, The Body Under the Piano is the clever debut of a new series for middle-grade readers and Christie and Poirot fans everywhere, from a Governor General’s Award–nominated author of historical fiction for children."

A middle grade mystery series inspired by young Agatha Christie?? Yes yes YES. I was so excited to read this one! 

I think the historical setting and the characterizations were my favorite parts. I loved going around Aggie's turn-of-the-century town with her as she gathered clues. And Aggie and Hector are such cute little mystery-solving pals. It's fun to follow along as they try to do some important work in an age where all the adults were trying to get them to leave things alone. I loved young Hector/Hercule and his proper finicky ways even more than I loved young Aggie/Agatha, I think.

The mystery was well done, and I was definitely deceived at first! I did manage to piece it together before the reveal, but it was satisfying to see how it all came together. Some of the book I felt moved a little slowly, but I was definitely into the parts where it picked up.

There is quite a lot of detail put into some rather gruesome elements (the effects of a poisoning, dead bodies both human and animal, brains leaking out, etc) - Aggie is based on a mystery writer in the making, after all, and she does a lot of thinking about these shocking things she sees, describing them in her head with a mystery writer's touch. Some readers may be turned off by this, but I think most readers who are interested in a historical mystery are going to be just fine with it. My middle-grade-age self would have been ALL about this - I loved the morbid and macabre and all that good stuff (aaand maybe I still do).

Overall, I thought this was a brilliant idea for a book and I'm looking forward to joining Aggie and Hector for another mystery in the next book in the series, Peril at Owl Park, due out in September 2020!


Final verdict: I liked it! I thought this book was good! I enjoyed reading it and I would probably recommend it to others.

{ Thank you to the publisher for providing me with a review copy.
My reviews are honest and my opinions are my own; 

your reading experience may vary, so give it a read and see what you think. :) }